Soaring Dragon, Dancing Phoenix
by Luna Goldsun
Summary: Sequel to "That's Why They Call It the Present". The Jiao Clan may be defeated, but the past has a funny way of creeping back to haunt you, as Po and Tai Lung are about to find out...the hard way.
1. Chapter 1: Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership to KFP, which is © of Dreamworks Animation Studios. The original characters appearing in this work are © me, and are my own intellectual property, so please do not use them without my permission. Thank you.

Author's Note: Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? But I'm glad to be back. For everyone who responded to the poll I had on my profile page, thank you. I was very honored to see so many people wished to see a sequel to "Memoirs of a Master"; however, I will have to decline on the basis that I feel anything I write concerning "Memoirs" would never live up to what I had accomplished with the original. I decided that my writing a sequel to it would be akin to painting another Mona Lisa—to do so takes away from the original work. Leaving "Memoirs" as it is, because all loose ends that can be tied, have been tied, and I can see no way to improve it, is probably for the best.

Now, as for "That's Why They Call It the Present", I felt there was quite a bit of potential there. I've already started penning/typing it, but don't expect to see full chapters anytime soon; I'm a terrible perfectionist, so I don't want to post anything until a) I have a surplus of chapters and b) when the chapters I have are to my standards. I've been very busy in my personal life, so weekly updates are probably not going to happen either—perhaps monthly or bi-monthly. But, I digress…for your reading pleasure, a teaser for "Soaring Dragon, Dancing Phoenix" (working title).

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Chapter 1/Prologue

* * *

Far to the north, beyond China's borders, in a wind-swept land of frequent cold temperatures and fierce winters, a lone wolf strode down a well-beaten path, through a dense pine forest, to an old inn. The inn's timbers were gray from age and harsh weather, and the entire establishment looked near-ready to topple to its foundation. The sparse, tiny windows on the second floor were dark, but for one red-gold light in the middle that glared down at him like a single demon's eye. The wolf shivered and clutched his cloak closer around his shoulders, but it was not the howling wind he was shielding himself from.

The sign over the door had the inn's name written in Chinese and Mongolian, and featured the pictographic feature of a decapitated lupine head. The Wolf's Head Inn; the name alone made the canine swallow uncomfortably. This wolf was not the brightest, and still green, having only just entered the indentured service of his lord and master. Owing a debt to a warlord was never smart, but he had a hard choice to make: join and work off the debt…or die.

Actually, in hindsight, it was a rather easy decision.

Coming here in mid-Autumn, when the weather was just starting to take a turn for the worse, was probably not smart either. The days were getting shorter, and the nights—always the time for witchery and evil spirits—became longer and longer…too long for his comfort. So, however bad this place seemed from the name alone, it beat sleeping outside in these cold, dark, terrifyingly dense woods.

Stealing up what little nerve he had left, he approached the door, hearing the muffled din of music, yelling, and raucous laughter. As soon as he opened the door, the muffled noises became a fierce roar. Before his very eyes, a boar and a gorilla bandit decided to start a brawl over a mahjong game whilst the observers just sat back nursing hardy drinks and smoking opium pipes. Smoke hung in the air like veils from the ceiling, the smell invading his nostrils and making him choke on the thick, noxious air.

The wolf recognized quite a few different nationalities here. This inn was not too far off the Silk Road, and the nearest town was, in fact, a stop along the way. Here, he saw many different ethnicities, and creatures, with strange names, stranger customs, and even stranger languages. He'd lost count of it all; his comrades had pointed out many by name in the town, and he recognized some by their style of dress: Uighur, Persian, Kazakh, and Hazara from the far West, across the treacherous Gobi and over equally treacherous mountains. Mongol, Yao, Han, Manchu, from China. And from the far north were Tartars, Russians, and the hardier Siberians…the type of men no one trifled with.

The wolf's eyes flicked over to the bar, where a huge rhino served up various drinks with a dark scowl. The rough-looking patrons, no matter how tough they looked, kept their distance from this formidable creature…but offered some generous tips.

The rhino reached out a tattooed hand and grabbed up the foreign gold coins left on the table by large brown bear. Taking one, the rhino bit down on it; it was solid. With a shrug, he collected the rest and dumped the coins in a box behind the bar.

Now that the wolf thought about it, liquid courage was probably a good idea. The wolf carefully dodged another dueling duo and ducked when a chair flew over his head, as he made straight for the bar. The rhino eyed his new customer carefully, then banged his fist once against the bar. The sound echoed off the ancient walls, silencing the rowdy bunch. A stiff, dead-serious glare was the only suggestion needed to get the patrons to behave themselves; wordlessly, without a hint of protest, the patrons resumed their games, gambling and whore-cavorting, and the music struck up again on a quieter tune.

"What'll it be, kid?" the rhino greeted soberly.

"Uh…I guess the Amber."

The rhino snorted and reached behind the bar for a crystal bottle of deep amber liquid and poured a glass. "You got a meeting with some guy?"

"Uh, sort of…I'm actually looking to hire…a professional." The rhino gave him an odd look. "Not _that_ kind of professional." The wolf lowered his voice. "I need someone…_taken care of_."

The bartender eyed him for a moment; then, once he believed that was the 'professional' the wolf was after, the bartender asked, "Gotcha. Who's the stiff?"

"Two stiffs: the Dragon Warrior, and Tai Lung."

The inn became deathly quiet, the music ceasing immediately, conversations and games of chance lulled as all eyes turned to stare. Someone swore in Mongolian and another muttered a Russian prayer. The hardiest of warriors all paled, the toughest bandits looked faint, and a few assassins began inching towards the nearest exit. Apparently, the Dragon Warrior's reputation preceded him…and Tai Lung's, too, for that matter.

A dark look from the bartender set the others back to minding their own business before the rhino turned back to the wolf. Much to the canine's surprise, the rhino looked quite shaken as well. "Not a lot of guys stupid enough to go after them two. But if you want the job done…"

"I want the job done _right_," the wolf emphasized. "If you know of anyone competent enough…"

The rhino fell silent, his small deep-set eyes glancing around the room nervously. He grabbed the wolf's collar, lifting the canine clear off the ground and hissed in his ear. "Only one fella for that kinda job…but you don't want his services. They come at a price."

"Any price will do."

"You don't understand—I'm not talkin' money, here. This guy will—"

"Look, my employer wants the job done, and I can't disobey him!" the wolf hissed, paling at the thought of what his master would do. Like a lowly dog, he desperately begged, "C'mon, buddy, help a guy out; if I don't get someone else to take care of this, it'll be _my_ sorry tail going to kill them! I might be wet behind the ears, but I'm not stupid!"

The rhino glanced back at him, then let him go. "Fine; but it's your boss' head, remember that. He's set up shop in Room Three."

The wolf rubbed his throat and nodded, "And he's good?"

"He's got a reputation…but I'll let you decide," the rhino said cryptically, turning his back.

The wolf took the cue, stalking over to the stairs and climbing to the next level. Patrons purposefully moved out of his way as he passed, following the corridor to the room labeled with the character for "3" in red paint. Feeling his heartbeat thundering in his ears and his throat as dry as the Gobi, he raised his knuckle to knock. On the third rap, the door cracked open on its own. The wolf gulped, pressing against the door to poke his head in.

"Um…hello?"

The room was dark, but for two blue-green eyes shining in the light of a glowing pipe, the tobacco leaves glowing red in the navy-black darkness. Blue-gray smoke filtered from the occupant's mouth, curling around its eyes as a deep, rumbling, heavily accented voice answered, "Business…or pleasure?"

"Business," the wolf answered quickly. "A, uh, request from my master, Lord White Wolf."

"Enter. Close, lock door behind you."

The wolf was no fool; he had no interest in locking himself in with a creature he did not know, who, if the bartender's behavior was any indication, was a very, very dangerous man. Still, he walked into the shadowy room, asking before he closed the door, "I don't know how to put this delicately…" he paused. "How do I know you won't kill me as soon as I close this door?"

A rough chuckle ripped from the creature's throat. "Smarter than you look. Very vell, I tell: vhen I kill you, you vill face me, you vill be armed. _Da_?"

He didn't know why, but this put him at ease. "No honor among thieves."

"Is good think am no thief," the creature chuckled, blowing out more smoke. "Sit, stand, don't care. State business, volf."

"I…My boss needs a couple guys taken care of…the bartender downstairs, he told me you uh..." How had he put it? "…you have a reputation."

"Depend who talk. Depend vhere you hear. Every lord from here to Kievan Rus know my name, and fear me. Is eh, how you say…gossip? You know, I know thinks people say…_I_ say, is no gossip."

"I don't even know your name."

"Yet." The creature took another draw from his pipe, and his body moved to pick something up. In the red light of the burning tobacco, the wolf saw a candle lit on the burning leaves, the warm golden light finally revealing the face of the mysterious assassin.

He had heard of these creatures, from the far north, and incredibly rare. Rarer than snow leopards, even rarer than Siberian tigers, this was an uncommon species, but also, an extraordinary people. Not even Amur tigers like Jiao Shen could brag about their own hardiness when compared to a creature like this one. Amur leopards may not have been as large or imposing as their tiger neighbors, but they were tougher in leaps and bounds.

This was exactly what sat before him, with an open bottle of hard liquor at his spotted claw and carved pipe between his black lips. The spotted cat's hide had wide rosettes, black-lined and dark gray in the middle, and he sported a broad, round, brawny face remarkably clear of scars, and a bulky body covered by thick golden fur. The only thing that stood out about this cat where the striking blue-green eyes that stared back at his guest, devoid of emotion, studying him like prey.

The Amur leopard took another long drag and bade his guest to sit. "Sit, sit, haff drink, _da_? I no hurt a customer…unless given good reason."

Warily, the wolf took the offered seat, but declined the drink. "Listen, uh, my boss was wondering if it were possible—I mean, if you are the best—"

"_If_ I am best?!" the leopard laughed hoarsely. "_If_?! Boychik, I vas killing long before you vere crawlink! Now, who is dead man? _Who_ is so difficult to kill?" the leopard poured more hard liquor for himself and raised it to his lips.

"Two men: Tai Lung, and the Dragon Warrior Po Ping."

The cup stopped when the rim reached his lips. The Amur leopard stared at his guest, a flicker of amazement in his blue-green eyes.

"Is joke," he growled.

"It's no joke," the wolf stated firmly. "My boss wants to gain access to the Valley of Peace, to raid it. In order to do that, the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung need to be taken out…"

"You think I am _eediot_?" the leopard snarled with a curled lip, revealing his dangerously sharp yellowed fangs. He slammed his cup down onto the table. "I know vhat happen to Jiao Shen—I no idiot. Dragon Varrior and Tai _Luung_ can stay in pretty valley. Is no fur off my back..."

"My boss will pay any price you ask. Money is no object."

"No object? Who you think you talk vit?" the leopard sneered. "You vant this done, see Vu Sister; let little fool kill theyself!"

"Vu Sister?" the wolf asked in confusion.

"_Da_. Vu Sister. Snow leopard, kill magistrate family last month…"

"Oh, the _Wu_ _Sisters_!" the wolf smiled in understanding.

"Is vhat I say." The leopard fell silent a moment, then asked, "Hypo…hypothe…vhat is vord?"

"Hypothetically?" he offered.

"_Da_, that. _Hypothetically,_" he said, testing the word on his tongue, "…how much?"

"Five hundred in silver, each."

The Amur leopard dared to sneer at the obscene amount. The wolf was completely flabbergasted; five hundred in silver was a prince's ransom! But the leopard scoffed, "You give trinket for prince! _Never_ vork for so little!"

He never worked for so little? _This guy must be __**loaded**__. _The wolf knew how much was riding on this; if he didn't get this guy to agree, the job would fall to him and his comrades. And since none of them truly favored the idea of going up against either the panda or the snow leopard…he had to think fast. If Jiao Shen and his entire army were no match for a single panda and single snow leopard, what chance did _he_ have? He wasn't bred for this; hell, he was from a family of silkworm farmers for Kuan Yin's sake! If his boss said that money was no object…

"Five hundred each, up front, double later."

"One thousand each, after job done?"

"Fifteen hundred each, in the end…with interest; say…ten percent?"

The Amur leopard mulled over this a moment, then nodded, rubbing his chin as he mused, "Ten percent, eh? Ten percent is good start. But am not sold."

"We can easily make it twenty."

"Twenty? Vell, _naow_ ve are talkink…" the leopard said, leaning forward with interest.

But he wasn't done; the wolf had yet one more weapon in his arsenal. "There's also a…rumor…"

"Haff no time for games," the leopard said, emptying the pipe's contents into the brazier next to him.

"No games. You mentioned Jiao Shen…"

"He die two year ago," he replied emotionlessly. "To recover body cost extra."

"No, nothing like that. See, in China, I don't know if you've heard…there's a, ah, bounty out for any Jiao Clan survivors."

"Is no survivors."

"Wrong. According to the rumors, there's one. He was pardoned by the Emperor himself a year ago, and allowed to live in the Valley of Peace. Shen's youngest, Jiao Dalang."

This time the leopard looked completely surprised, almost dropping his pipe in shock. "…Vhat?"

The wolf nodded, perfectly serious.

The leopard shook his head, fervidly denying, "Is joke. You pull tail. Dalang die ova ten year ago—Jiao Shang kill him; I vas there, I know."

"Wrong again." The wolf swallowed hard, reiterating the story as he'd heard it. "They say that Shang faked it, and Dalang escaped. Shang's now dead, and Dalang's residing in the Valley of Peace. I have on good authority that he _is_ there…and is married to Master Tigress, the leader of the Furious Five. Though because he's the last Jiao, and Shen had many enemies…those enemies placed a high price on Dalang's head, including my master."

"If true he marry Master Tigress, he smart man, surround himself vit friends like that…" the leopard thought it over, still stroking his chin considerately. He flicked his eyes over to the brazier, watching the coals as they burned. "…How much is vorth?"

"Jiao's enemies overall are offering five thousand total, in gold and silver."

The leopard laughed, low and throaty, the harsh amusement sounding like crunching gravel deep in his throat; not quite the reaction the wolf was expecting. Still, the leopard shook his head, chortling, "Trinkets for prince…king's ransom for urchin…you Han never cease to amaze. Now that I know vhat you say…" he said, standing and pacing the room. "Makes situation…most interesting."

"We just want the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung dead," the wolf explained. "What you do with Dalang is your business; you'll get paid either way. I just…thought you might like to know."

"Is interesting…" the leopard nodded, staring into space as he thought.

"If its any consolation, Dalang would be easy to take down—" The wolf drew back in alarm when the leopard rounded on him.

"EASY?! You think _easy_ to kill Jiao?! Kill _panda_ and _snow leopard_ is easy! You vere not there, you not know vhat Dalang can do. May be veak-minded, but no, _never_ veak. Remember alvays these vords: he does _not_ fight…does not mean he _cannot_."

"Wait, I'm confused…are you taking the job or not?"

The leopard stared him down, unblinking, and the wolf wondered if he should fear for his own life. But the leopard pulled away after a long, tense minute. "I vill take job, to kill panda and snow leopard. If anythink, it prove I stronger than two 'strongest' varriors."

"Would you kill Jiao Dalang too?"

The leopard paused then shrugged. "Depend on mood. Money make situation most interesting…and inviting. Whole thing is challenge…" he smiled cruelly. "Challenge, I like.

"_But_," he said with great emphasis, "Vill not happen right avay. Vill need time to spy, to know enemy, find veakness and take down. They haff family? Too easy. Girlfriend? Much easy. No like 'easy'…'easy' is lazy, no imagination. I like challenge…"

Wait a minute, this sounded awfully familiar…

The wolf had heard this philosophy before, but where? An assassin, best of the best, from the far north, who never took an easy job…

His heart leap into his throat as he gasped out the Amur leopard's name, a name that sent shivers down the spine of any who traveled the Silk Road. When he heard his name whispered, as if invoking an evil spirit, the Amur leopard laughed.

"Ah, you haff heard of me!" the leopard grinned. "Most egg-cellent. Tell your boss I vill take job. Vill visit, sign contract."

"We typically don't write up con—but we can always make exceptions!" he added quickly after the leopard's fierce glare. "Matter of fact, I'll ask my boss if he's okay with doubling your payment for the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung!"

"Do vhat you vant," the assassin said dismissively. "They are not prize I seek."

"You favor Jiao Dalang over those two? But…they're the greatest warriors in all of China!"

"You misunderstand. Is personal."

The wolf waited for clarification; when he received none, he quickly excused himself, gave the assassin the address for the meeting, then promptly left. Downstairs, he glanced at the bartender, who wordlessly poured another cup of amber liquor for the quaking canine. The wolf gratefully accepted it and threw it back, the liquid sloshing over the rim from the force of his shaking hand. When he slammed the cup back onto the bar, he reached a trembling hand to his money bag. "H-how m-m-much do I owe you?"

"Fuhgeddabowit," the rhino said, ashen-faced. "On the house; after meeting with _that_ guy, I'd hafta be heartless to charge ya for a drink."

* * *

Far to the south, in the foothills of the Tibetan mountains, The Master opened his eyes as the vision came to him. In his age, very little took him by surprise anymore, but this image of the savage creature—more animal than man—crossed his vision and prompted long-buried memories to return to the surface. Despite his years, despite the horrors he had seen—wars, refugees, disasters both natural and mortal—he shivered right down to the bones…but not from the chill in the dark room.

Gathering his saffron-yellow robes around him, he stood abruptly from his meditation and marched from the room, alerting the young monks who had been assigned as his assistants. The boys followed in silence, barely keeping up with The Master as he hurried down dark halls, passing the cells of his fellow monks, until coming out into the main courtyard.

The monastery around him was dark and quiet in the still of the night, the only sounds were the birds flying to their winter roost and the winds howling between the jagged peaks like ravenous wolves coming in for the kill. The monastery, built years ago, had scarlet walls and blue tile roofs, the tiles' color representing heaven. Only shrines and temples were allowed this color; only the emperor's palaces were allowed golden yellow tiles. And yet, the very building The Master was marching towards was a tall pagoda, roofed in solid gold ceramic tiles, the walls painted a red so brilliant that not even the harsh elements over hundreds of years could fade it. The heavy double doors, that would normally have taken a dozen men to open, slammed open when the old Master pushed against them and marched into the shrine. Before him was a red hall, the floors and pillars made of red marble; in the latter were carved ornamental birds and flames. He came upon another set of double doors, leading to the sanctuary.

The young boys drew back as The Master approached the doors, drawing out a key that hung around his neck. Fitting the key into the lock of the giant scarlet doors, he pushed the ancient structures open and strode into the hall. Before him was the monastery's most sacred shrine, and resting upon the altar, was a brilliant statue of a bird. This strange bird had the head of a golden pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, a peacock's tail and the long spindly legs of a crane. Its wings were outstretched as if preparing for flight, and it held a most precious object safely in its beak. The one striking feature of this bird was its brilliant colors: bright red with wingtips and tail a shimmering gold, the statue carved from rubies, it was said, and gilt with gold so pure it was not even worthy of the emperor himself. Not even the Son of Heaven was worthy of a god's gold.

The Master halted himself just in time, kneeling before the statue and offering silent prayers before continuing forward. He reached for the altar and opened a red lacquered box, finding a golden scroll laid upon red silk. He extracted the scroll and laid it on a low table in front of the altar, his old wrinkled eyes scanning the yellowed document until he came to the passage he desired.

_In the time when great turmoil comes to the empire, when all are threatened by evil, the Dragon Warrior must be chosen. When the Dragon Warrior is chosen, the time of the Phoenix Warrior is close at hand. The fires of war will devastate, rivers of plague wash over the land, winds of greed driving men to vice and scandal, all the forces of nature setting to destroy mortal Man to restore balance. Only when the Dragon soars and the Phoenix dances, shall peace and prosperity reign over the land._

The Master closed his eyes and rolled up the prophetic scroll, replacing it back into its protective case and in the box, which he locked securely before laying his hand upon it. So, the prophecy was true. He had heard that the Dragon Warrior had been decided, by Oogway no less. Legends told of a time prior to the very existence of kung fu, to an age in turmoil, much like this one, the so-called "Third Age", when two legendary warriors rose from the ashes of war and devastation to bring peace and order to a lawless land. The Master had seen the writing on the wall, as the saying went, and through his meditations, his tireless research, and visions he had seen since he was a lad, many, many decades ago, that the end of the Fourth Age was at hand.

And only the Dragon Warrior—and the Phoenix Warrior—could save them from almost certain and absolute destruction.

His eyes rose to the ruby bird, the legendary protector of the legendary warrior this temple was dedicated to. The legend of a man brought back from the brink of death to serve the people of his adopted homeland, who fought as a brother beside the greatest warrior Chinese history had ever known.

The Master had heard the story of the Dragon Warrior…and also heard the rumors that the Phoenix Warrior had also come.

"Heaven help us," he whispered. "Whoever you are, wherever you are…" he ran his fingers along the golden tail feathers, coming as close as he dared to the deity's likeness. "Your people need you."

* * *

Well, that's it for the teaser (or should this be considered a first chapter? *shrug* ). Please let me know what you think, what thoughts you have, I'd be very interested to hear (read) what you have to say. Please don't expect anything for a while. My personal life has been pretty hectic, and as I stated above, I can't guarantee that I'll actually get anything additional posted for another few months. Ideally, I'd love to have this completed before I post it, but I think we all know how futile that is. Anyways, please read and review.


	2. Chapter 2: Life Goes On

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Kung Fu Panda; it belongs solely to Dreamworks Animation Studios. I do, however, own the OCs, so please do not use them without my permission. Thank you.

A couple notes: Yes, I know I said "Don't expect anything from me for a good long while"...well, I'm actually rather proud of the work I did on this, so I'm posting it now. I've gone through it over and over so that I KNOW its as perfect as perfect can be. To make up for fewer updates, the chapters in this story are going to be LONG...you've been warned.

Last Note (I promise): _qiūfēn_ is the Chinese equivalent for late September/early October (about Sept 23-Oct 7 in Western calendar).

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Chapter 2: Life Goes On

* * *

Po yawned hugely as he plodded over to the Training Hall that early _qiūfēn_ morning. He may have completely fallen into the lifestyle of a kung fu master, but that didn't make his mornings any easier. He just wasn't a morning person, and really, how many people actually were? He felt vindicated when both Tai Lung and Dalang affirmed they were both night owls; it meant that for the most part, the "lazy" comments the panda had received before he began training were certainly unfounded.

This morning, like most mornings, he was meeting Tai Lung at the Training Hall for some much-needed tutoring. Though he had been the Dragon Warrior for three years, and had figured out the secret of the Dragon Scroll, Po was still very limited in his experience with kung fu. Shifu was an excellent teacher, but after the events of the Jiao War, the red panda had retreated from his strict control of the Jade Palace. Shifu's given reason for this was him having seen his students "prove themselves" in the battle against Jiao Shen and his forces.

Po huffed as he pushed himself up the steps to the Training Hall, thinking over the events of the past two years in a desperate effort to wake himself up. Po didn't think Shifu's answer made sense. They were the Furious Five, the heroes of China! Hadn't they proved themselves a hundred times over, long before Jiao was even a threat to the valley? But the more time he spent with the red panda, the more Po saw just how controlling he could be. And he noticed something else too, something that explained quite a lot. Nothing was ever good enough for Shifu, and this in turn explained why both Tigress and Tai Lung were such hopeless perfectionists…just like their master and father.

But apparently that battle had made him see things differently. Po had to admit with an outward smirk, perhaps Wu Lien had something to do with that too. A year ago, the creator of the Lotus style, the famed Mountain Lotus, had accepted her fellow master's proposal, and the two were now enjoying a late-life marriage, something that suited both lonely souls. Wu could be just as controlling as Shifu at times, but oddly, their time spent as husband and wife had mellowed them both to the point that their "kids" could pass their days without fearing the small masters' sudden appearance.

In fact, quite a few marriages had occurred in the past year alone. It had been empire-wide news when Master Tigress married Jiao Dalang. Despite the publicity (and the controversy) they had a small wedding, just close friends and family, and Po couldn't imagine seeing any two people so in love with each other. Less than three months later, both tigers announced to their elated comrades that they would be expecting a little stranger come Spring…

Crane and Viper had gotten engaged, had a relatively short courtship before tying the knot. They had _planned_ a small ceremony, but unfortunately for Viper, her parents were so ecstatic from the news of her engagement that they willingly paid for the whole wedding…and pulled out all the stops. Not everyone was a happy camper, though; Crane's mother glowered at the bride for the whole day, clearly _not_ pleased at her son's choice. Grand Master Viper, on the other hand, couldn't have been happier.

A few weeks later, a much more muted affair united the two snow leopards, Tai Lung and Mei Xing, in holy matrimony. Shifu had officiated, as he had done at the previous weddings (except his own, that honor had gone to Po, who, as the Dragon Warrior, _technically _outranked him). Even the red panda had said later, that he was very proud of his prodigal son. And much like the tigers, it wasn't long after that they too discovered a little bundle of joy was on the way. That had been six months ago.

And speaking of the devils themselves, he found both Tai Lung and Dalang waiting for him outside the Training Hall, and Dalang had brought along a guest.

"Hey! _There_ he is!" Po grinned widely, trotting over to accept the squirming infant from Dalang's arms. Baby Shang grinned and cooed as the panda lifted him high in the air and tickled him. "Whooza cute lil baby? Who's the cutest baby in the valley? _You_ are, _yes_ you are! Yes you_ are_!" he cooed back.

"Easy, Po," Dalang said, "We're trying to cut back on the baby talk…"

Po held the baby up to look back at his daddy. "Aw c'mon; with a face like this, it's _impossible_ not to use baby-talk. Inn't that right?" he cooed back at Shang, who squealed and kicked. Po winced when one of those little feet kicked him hard in the stomach.

Dalang quickly took his son back, looking apologetic. "Sorry, I shoulda warned you about that…"

"Tha-that's okay… He…got Tigress' strength," Po wheezed, doubling over in pain.

"Yeah…" Dalang sighed. "Here's hoping he didn't get her temper."

"Good luck," Tai Lung laughed. "A bit early to tell though…how old is he now?"

"Six months," the tiger smiled, tickling his son's cheek, earning a love-filled smile. "Six months, but not even a first word yet. Auntie said it'd take about this long; he's been making noises that sound like words though…"

"It'll happen," Po said. "Speaking of Tigress, where is she?"

Dalang thumbed over his shoulder at the building. "She's working off the baby weight."

"_What_ baby weight?" Tai Lung stared. "Did she gain _anything_ with this pregnancy?"

"She swears she gained thirty pounds, though I doubt it."

"How big was this kid when he was born?" the snow leopard asked.

The tiger thought for a moment, "Uh…about nine and a half pounds, twenty-three inches long?"

Po and Tai Lung paused before the panda said, "I, uh, may not know a lot about babies…but isn't that kinda…_big_?"

The tiger gave them a deadpan look. "_Amur tiger_," he reminded.

"Oh, yeah…but still, she needed to gain that weight. Ms. Wu and Su Lin said it was all necessary for a healthy baby."

"Tell me about it," Tai Lung sighed. "But I try explaining that to Mei Xing…she's ticked about gaining _ten_." He prudently left out the actual metrics; there were just certain things a husband absolutely did _not_ reveal about his wife, and the weight she gained during pregnancy was one of them.

"Tai, Mei's seven months along," Dalang reminded, adjusting his son in his arms. "Gaining twenty pounds or more is normal, I've heard; and besides that, that weight gain's actually good for her and the baby. I know it's always been hard for her to gain the weight back after…well, you know…"

Tai Lung was grateful that Dalang left out Mei Xing's medical history; it had been hard enough hearing what her ex-husband had done to her, to be continually reminded of it hurt more than he was willing to say. He saw it every so often in his wife's habits. If he were having a bad day and was really irritated, he noticed she kept her distance from him, sometimes for hours or even days at a time, and then deny something was wrong. Whenever she required additional doctor's visits, she apologized for "being such a burden". And if she were feeling particularly weak one day as a result of her pregnancy, and was unable to do her chores, she would apologize to him, over and over, until the point of tears; it took all of Tai Lung's inner strength to keep from running off to kill her ex-husband himself. Whatever he had done to her had longer-lasting effects than he was comfortable with. He never resented her for it; he knew she wasn't the one to blame.

"Auntie and Su Lin are working on that—Mr. Ping too, which I'm grateful for." Which was true: the goose, like Dalang before him, ensured that he made a little extra for the female snow leopard, and was especially diligent with her special pregnancy diet. Meanwhile, Su Lin—who was a quick study in all matters of healing thanks to her late mother's books and journals—was diligent in keeping her up to date with her vitamins and supplements. So far, everything was going smoothly.

"What about you?" Po asked as they walked to the training hall for some equipment. "How are _you_ doing?"

The snow leopard sighed. "I'm doing my best to cook all her meals. I had no idea pregnant women had so many dietary restrictions! Nothing sour, nothing too sweet or salty, nothing spicy, and no fish, which would apparently make the child sickly…or something? I don't know; it's ridiculous! You know how much she likes her spicy food…"

"Two more months and that'll be over," Dalang assured him. "Her cravings have settled down, at least. Pick your battles, man."

"I wish it were that easy; telling _her_ to take it easy is tough, what with her career as the restaurant's assistant manager."

"You haven't had to immobilize her," Dalang smirked, remembering one incident early in his wife's pregnancy when Shifu got so annoyed with Tigress's insistence at training that he applied a gentle nerve strike to get her to rest. Eventually, Tigress had mellowed out, and Shang was born in early spring of that year. Named for his late uncle, the heroic man he would never know, the boy was the mirror image of his father, right down to the yellow-green eyes and puckish smile.

The baby tiger gummed his tiny fist, laying his head on his father's shoulder as they ascended the steps and gazed through the wooden doors. The baby's green eyes widened as his still-developing vision settled on the orange and red blur jumping and flipping across the spinning serpents, ducking between the swinging clubs. His wide eyes lit up and his smile widened.

Dalang pointed to the limber figure. "See that? Whoozat? Is that Mama? Can you say 'Mama'? I bet you can, smart boy. Say _yeah_, I bet you _can_!" He tickled the baby's neck, earning a smile and a giggle. "Come on, 'lil guy, say 'Mama'…" he cast a look to his wife, who had ceased her practice and was walking towards him. "Say 'Mama'! Dada wants your first word to be 'Mama', so Mama doesn't hurt Dada if you say 'Dada' first…"

Tigress snickered when she overheard. "I wouldn't be that mad and you know it."

"Just covering my tail, sweetie." He kissed her sweetly and purred as she nuzzled him. "You gonna be training long today?"

"Not at all; training's not so important anymore; isn't that right, sweetie?" Tigress said as she reached out for her son. Shang willingly opened his arms, latching onto his mother when she took him from Dalang. She let his little hand wrap around one of her fingers as she bounced him on her hip. "Ready to spend the day with Mama? Does wittle Shang wanna go see Master Shifu? _Shifu_…" she pressed, doing her level best to expand the child's vocabulary early. The cub just gave her a blank look, once again gumming his tiny fist.

"Come on, sweetie, you know who I'm talking about: _Shifu_."

Another inquisitive stare…until the red panda in question limped into the training hall, one ear twitching. "Someone mention my name?"

The cub's reaction to the red panda's appearance was instantaneous. He let out a delighted, ear-piercing squeal and held out his arms to the tiny master. Shifu had to flatten his ears against his head, while Tai Lung, who had been standing right next to Tigress, only brought up a single finger to his ear and whimpered with a wince, "…_Owww_…"

Tigress sent them an apologetic look and set Shang down next to Shifu, who, despite not having much experience with young children (aside from raising Tai Lung), smiled and opened his arms to the little tiger. "Come here, Shang. Come to Shi—OW!"

The other adults had to bite back on their laughter when the infant clumsily stalked then quickly pounced on the red panda's tail, sinking his little claws into the appendage. Shifu made a face as the child squealed and crawled closer. "Tigress, I don't mean to be cruel, but _please_ get your firstborn away from me. I survived one kitten—my poor tail can't handle another."

All eyes immediately glanced in Tai Lung's direction. The snow leopard scowled at the red panda. "I didn't do that."

"The hell you didn't. You were also fond of calling me 'kitty panda' before you called me 'Si'fu'."

Dalang and Po snickered. "Kitty panda?"

The snow leopard blushed. "Well, he's a _type _of panda, and he _looks_ like a cat, doesn't he?"

Tigress leaned down and picked up her baby again, balancing him on her hip as she supported his head. "Well, we'll head on home. This little guy could use a nap soon. I'll check up on Mei Xing for you," she said to Tai Lung.

He nodded in affirmation, following Po to the obstacle course. "I'd appreciate it. Thanks."

* * *

Two years after Jiao Shen's defeat, Tigress' relationship with the snow leopard was still rather strained. If they at least had a grudging respect for one another, it was now in both their best interests to get along, for the sake of their spouses. For while Tigress still did not fully trust Tai Lung, she did trust Mei Xing, Su Lin, and Auntie Wu (and Dalang, of course), and she knew as long as she could trust them, she could trust them to keep the male snow leopard on a short leash.

That wasn't to say that he couldn't control himself, she thought as she carried Shang down the endless steps leading into the village. Tai Lung had shown remarkable resiliency in his patience threshold, with the odd flare-ups every so often. Lately, however, the Tiger style master had to concur with Su Lin that lately Tai Lung seemed…distracted.

"Hey, you made it!" Su Lin beamed when Tigress arrived at the Long and Feng Café. "Auntie just arrived with her morning class; feel free to sit wherever. Hey cutie," the panda cooed at Shang, who continued to gum his tiny paw.

Tigress scanned the crowd and found Wu Lien, which was no small feat. Tiny as the old woman was, she didn't exactly stand out in a crowd…at least until she opened her mouth.

"I said turn your foot _out,_ dear, _out_. No, no, no, that's _all_ wrong! And why are you clutching your fan like that? For goodness sake, it's between your thumb and first two fingers, _gently_! Darling, _please_, if Tai Lung can do it, there's no reason _you_ can't!"

Tigress smirked, yet still felt sorry for the students in Wu's care. The memories of Shifu's generous criticisms were still fresh, but if there was one thing that Wu excelled in where Shifu fell quite short, it was her generosity of criticism, as well as praise.

"Good, Chan, that's the way to do it. My, you have certainly improved since you came here a year ago; you must be the most-improved student of this semester! But time will tell, won't it, dear?" The red panda woman, for all intents and purposes, was honest—sometimes brutally so. Still, Tigress conceded that Wu had a point about Chan—an elephant—who had indeed come from a clumsy, lumbering joke into a dancer so graceful she could dance on the petals of a lotus. And she would never had believed it if she had not seen it herself. Wu, without a doubt, could teach _anyone_ to dance. And fight. Very well.

Tigress took a seat in the shade, sitting Shang down on the tabletop, who stared back at his mother with wide, curious green eyes. Tigress smiled and caressed his cheek, thinking—and not for the first time—how blessedly beautiful her son was.

"There's the little lady-killer!" Wu grinned as she sat opposite the tigers. Unlike Shifu, Wu happily welcomed the cub's adventurous nature, opening her arms to a cub that was almost bigger than she was. Shang nuzzled the red panda, making soft purrs as Wu hugged and kissed him. "Oh you are the cutest little baby I've seen in years! I mean, come on, _look_ at this face!" she proclaimed, pinching his chubby cheeks.

Tigress laughed softly, making idle small-talk with her. "So who would be the cutest baby you've ever seen?"

"Oh, it's a very close tie," Wu stated. "Hands down, the two cutest would be Shang here, and Tai Lung." The red panda sighed when Tigress scowled. "Oh come now, he wasn't always…the way he is," she said judiciously, then went right back to cooing at the tiger cub. "Let me assure you, like this one, he was the cutest little son of a bitch you've ever seen!"

"Aunt Wu!"

"Well it's true! But I'll be frank;" she winked conspiringly, "Though conceived within wedlock, my nephew _can_ be a bit of a bastard."

Tigress finally laughed. Wu smirked in triumph. "It's almost this one's naptime isn't it?"

"I'm about to feed him," Tigress explained. "Then down for a nap."

"Just him, or both of you?" Wu teased. Tigress' cheeks reddened, but she smiled. "Fine, the pregnancy took a lot out of me…"

"As it does every woman, dear. For every baby I've brought into this world, I've always told the mothers to get exercise, or the baby will be weak. Well, how many husbands do you think heeded that?"

Tigress sighed. "Its safe to assume that not all husbands are like your Shifu…"

"Or your Dalang." Wu paused a moment, glancing around the restaurant as her students helped themselves to Mr. Ping's delicious noodles and Su Lin's sumptuous dumplings. The only thing missing was Dalang's signature dim sum; it was his first day off since Shang was born and, naturally, he spent it doing odd jobs and favors for Shifu and Sonam.

"He doesn't talk about the past much, does he?" Wu asked.

Tigress sighed. He didn't, and every time she tried to get more out of him, he was always rather reluctant, or when he finally told her something, his answer was so vague that it gave her more questions than answers. All she knew about his past were things she had gleaned from Su Lin, and the things Wu had told her before the tigers were married. Neither panda knew the whole story, and Dalang wasn't talking.

Sure, he would freely talk about his ten years on the run from his family; he loved talking about the places he'd traveled to (Kaifeng and Chengdu being in the top favorites). He was a little less willing to tell her about the women he'd dated, but Tigress understood jealousy was unnecessary; he had married _her_, not one of those other women. Now, she had not been happy to learn that his first—not first kiss or first girlfriend, just…his first—had been a one-night stand…in the red light district. But, everyone made mistakes, and her husband had more than made up for it.

…Hadn't he?

"He still won't tell me about the first years of his life." She paused. "I wonder…sometimes, just how bad Jiao Shen was…"

"Bad," Wu said shortly. "Trust me; he was rotten through and through." She was otherwise silent on the matter, instead putting all her attention on the cub. She tried to block out the memories from that horrible night, so long ago. Shen—the bastard—had lied like a mange-ridden dog on a dirty rug. He had promised to stay away after Nima had defeated him in battle. Then he came back to steal Ming Hua, who ended up going with him willingly. Deep in her heart of hearts, the red panda figured Shen had threatened her, but why Ming Hua never tried to kill him was the most perplexing mystery she could contemplate.

"Welcome back!"

"Gah! Don't _do_ that!" Wu jumped, clutching her heart when Mr. Ping came out of nowhere. The goose turned out two bowls of noodles and a bowl of fish congee for Shang. The cub smiled at the goose, kicking his little feet excitedly at the funny bird.

"Noodles on the house, of course!" the goose continued. "Friends and family only! I made a special noodle soup—a new recipe!"

Tigress and Wu blanched, feeling their stomachs churn. Not another one! The last few times Ping had tried a new recipe…well, the first nearly destroyed Tai Lung's vocal chords, the second took Dalang out of work for a week while he nursed nausea at the same time Tigress was nursing morning sickness; the third one even _Po_ refused to sample. This was concoction number nine. The others weren't worth recalling.

"I…I would, but I'm still on my new-mother diet," Tigress covered.

"Oh!" The goose laughed, "How embarrassing, I completely forgot! Let me get you something else."

Wu cast a nasty look in the smug feline's direction, knowing full well that she had no true reason to avoid potential food poisoning. Shang, meanwhile, happily sat as his little hands reached for the bowl of his favorite congee. Tigress sat him on her lap and began feeding him, devoting her full attention to the baby.

Wu sighed and stared at the bowl in front of her. "Okay, I'll bite: what's in it?"

"Why, I'm glad you asked!" Ping said exuberantly. "It is a special seasonal soup, with fresh crab meat, and my new special seasoning, topped off with diced-cut vegetables…and noodles, of course!"

Wu shared an uncertain look with Tigress before realizing the goose wasn't leaving until the red panda had taken a sip. The look Tigress sent her was apologetic and sympathetic…and Wu was grateful she had recently updated her last will and testament. Struggling to keep her shaking hand still, she raised a spoonful of soup to her lips and sipped.

She paused. Ping looked nervous, and Tigress looked panicked. But Wu surprised both of them when she exclaimed, "Good heavens…this is amazing!"

"Really?!" Ping asked, delighted.

"_Really_?" Tigress asked, shocked.

Wu pushed the second bowl over to her. "Try it! I'm not lying, it's really, really good! Ping, however did you come up with this combination? Is that sea salt I taste?"

"Celery salt, actually. And you wouldn't believe that it was all an accident! Though I really should credit Tai Lung—you know his habit of mixing sauces and spices when he can't sleep. Anyway, when I sprinkled some of this onto a dumpling…I knew it would be perfect in soup!"

Tigress tentatively reached for her spoon. Wu's positive review of the soup was heartening…but the fact that the main spice had been of Tai Lung's creation did not settle her nerves. True, she did not entirely trust the snow leopard. But, the logical part of her reasoned, if he had yet to poison anyone in the past two years, he must be doing something right. Bearing that in mind, she took a sip while holding tightly to her squirming child. Even she couldn't believe it.

"Ping," she said slowly, "I think you may have something here."

"Wonderful!" the goose exalted. "I'll add it to the menu immediately! Oh, and I'll have to teach My Boys how to make it…"

The two women shared a small smile over their bowls. Since the aftermath of the Jiao War, as it had been known in the Valley, Mr. Ping had taken a special liking to whom he called "His Boys": Po, Tai Lung, and Dalang. Granted, Tai Lung had two fathers already, but Ping offered the one thing to the snow leopard that neither Shifu nor Sonam had given over the years: unconditional and enthusiastic praise and support. For every new recipe the former felon mastered, Mr. Ping was quick to praise "his best student"—a sentiment shared by the snow leopard's best friend, Po.

Dalang, of course, had grown a bit closer to Sonam in the past two years, something both Tigress and Wu were grateful for. It helped, in part, that Sonam had actually trailed the Jiao family for so long that he watched most of Dalang's early childhood, and had actually liked his mother; it also helped that both of them hated Jiao Shen with the intensity of a thousand Gobi suns. Having that much in common was a gift…but then again, so was Sonam's discovery of Dalang's gifts.

Tigress had not known that Dalang was a prodigy with knives and other blades, and that in fact, his specialty was in wielding twin short swords. Again, he didn't like talking about it, and refused to show her what he could do. "I don't fight, but I never said I _can't_," he told her.

But Sonam saw that gift, and sought to cultivate it…even if it killed him.

This was the reason Dalang had been up to the Jade Palace in the first place: to meet with Sonam. Po and Tai Lung were doing…something. Whether it was just training or meditation, they wouldn't say; Tigress and the other members of the Five assumed the two close friends were training in kung fu, and that made everyone happy. Whatever the panda and snow leopard were actually up to, they kept it close to the chest, guarding it like a sacred treasure. And whatever it was, neither Su Lin or Mei Xing would tell her…if they knew anything at all.

Su Lin eventually made it out of the crowd, taking off her apron as she approached the other women. "There you are! Tigress, how was training?"

Tigress grinned and stood to accept a hug from the female panda. "Refreshing as always. How was the morning rush, Su?"

"Oh, the usual," she sighed, yet happily. "Just enough to keep things interesting. But Poor Mei…not since the doctor told her to stay off her feet has she been happy."

"Bored?"

"Terribly. She does what little work she's allowed to do—she mostly does a lot of knitting and sewing…baby clothes, you know. I do sympathize with her," the panda said, accepting the seat next to Aunt Wu. "I know what its like; I hate to be cooped up. But, all the expectant mothers I've seen really should take it easier before birth, and get what rest they can."

"I believe it," the tiger muttered, fully remembering the lack of sleep that her firstborn was responsible for.

Wu offered the larger panda some tea and sat back, "You did take a look at her vitamins, didn't you?"

"Oh yes, very carefully. She's been doing very well. And Tai's been great with her special diet too. But…well you know how she likes her spicy food. There are times when I wish I could just add a little bit of ginger or garlic to her food."

"Just go ahead and do it," Wu said. "I've advised mothers to eat ginger and garlic, and they and their babies have been perfectly fine. Chinese medicine is a marvel to behold…but it's clear that the men who create these remedies do _not_ know a woman's body."

"Or they've _known_ them, but still don't _know_ them," Tigress winked.

Wu hid a smirk behind her teacup. "No kidding…"

"I've been meaning to ask…" Tigress started as she wiped the last of Shang's lunch from his face.

Wu took a sip of tea. "Yes?"

"How are you and Shifu? I know it's only been a year, but…"

Wu sighed and set her cup down. She had been expecting this; one year of marriage to Shifu was certainly the source of gossip for many in the village, owing to the fact that neither red panda had ever been previously married. "Well, for someone who has never married before, I admit, not only is it challenging, but it's also rewarding. I never would have guessed just how rewarding a late-life marriage could be…but Shifu's been a great help," she smiled fondly. "Yes, a great help."

Su Lin pursed her lips together as she pulled Shang over onto her lap to rock him in her arms. "But isn't it true you were afraid to get married?"

Wu's ears fell, pressing flat against her head, and she replied in a disembodied way. "Yes, that's true…for various reasons. Part of it was my…personal experiences. My father…he didn't treat my mother very well. Every day I trained, I taught girls and women who came from abusive homes; when I quit teaching and offered services as a midwife, I saw it all the time. Perhaps that was my greatest reason…and my greatest weakness. It's rather pathetic, now that I think about it…"

"I don't think so," Su Lin said, cradling the satiated and now-drowsy cub in her arms. "I think it's a perfectly understandable reason. I mean, I saw it too, remember? I was there with you…"

"Something I wish I had guarded you from," Wu sighed, then quickly changed the subject. "But perhaps opening your eyes to that taught you something. I thank the gods every day that Po doesn't treat you like that."

"He'll _never_ treat you like that," Tigress said with conviction. "You hooked a keeper."

Su Lin smiled fondly, her mind wandering as she gently rocked baby Shang to sleep. She loved the feeling of holding a baby in her arms like this. Deep down, Su Lin always knew she wanted to be a wife and mother someday…but not yet. She loved children, and so did her boyfriend, Po. He had told her many times, in fact, that he wanted to be a father someday, but whether or not she would be his wife when he finally made that step…she was not so sure. There wasn't exactly a surplus of giant pandas in the Valley of Peace, which sometimes made her wonder: was she just settling because she had little choice?

She was brought back to the present when she felt something warm and wet on her blouse. Shang was drooling in his sleep, the little angel. The panda giggled, "Did you want me to take him up to his crib?"

"Sure, I'll come with you to check on Mei," Tigress said. "Auntie, are you coming too?"

"Actually, I need to get back for the afternoon class," the red panda said, leaving some coins on the table for tip. "I'll see you ladies at dinner tonight. Girls!" she clapped her hands to get the attention of her students. "Afternoon class, line up outside in five minutes!"

While the red panda got down to the business she knew best, Tigress and Su Lin walked into the private apartments of the Long and Feng, depositing the sleeping baby into his crib in the tigers' bedroom. In the communal room, they heard heavy footsteps and a light groaning. Tigress poked her head out around the corner and smiled, "Hey, Mei."

Mei Xing, now seven months along and big with baby, settled herself into the comfy rocking chair her father-in-law Sonam had made just for her. Seated on the cushions, she rested her feet and aching back, closing her eyes in bliss. "Welcome back, Tigress," she smiled. "How was training?"

"Great!" she grinned, stretching her back. "It felt great to work up a sweat again! But how are you doing? Are you hungry, thirsty? Anything we can get for you?"

The female snow leopard shook her head, resting a hand on her stomach, "Just tired…I don't remember being this exhausted for my first pregnancy."

Tigress wisely remained silent, and Su Lin as well when she came to sit with the snow leopardess. Both females knew about the stillborn girl, and about every miscarriage since. In her previous marriage, Mei Xing had never carried a baby to term…and it was something that still terrified her. Right now, for example, she gently pressed her hand against her stomach, feeling for signs of life, the only proof she had that the baby inside her was still kicking. Literally.

She winced once, then smiled, relieved. "Another kick, thank the gods…"

"You and Baby should be fine," Su Lin said, but pinched her friend's arm just in case, to ward off bad luck. Tigress, not normally superstitious, even walked over to pinch her as well. Though the jade talisman she'd given her after Shang's birth should have been enough, neither female was taking chances. As she was thinking it, Mei Xing gripped the jade pendant in her hand, worrying the stone more than Tigress had. Despite her constant terror of losing the baby, Mei Xing would not voice her fears aloud, lest she invite evil spirits to take her baby from her.

She looked down at her stomach and sighed, voicing her concerns in generalized terms. "This is Tai Lung's first baby, and he deserves it. This isn't about me, really. I love him so much, this is one way of showing him that love…"

"Mei-Mei," Su Lin said sternly. "He loves you for more than that, and he doesn't need a baby to know you love him. You see how well he treats you? That's difference between him and that…that…"

"Monster?" Tigress offered, though the feline master had a few more incendiary words for the ex-husband.

"Yes, _him_," Su Lin scowled. "_He's_ the real reason for your problems: he was an evil man that the gods punished for his wickedness. But Tai Lung has done so many great things, that the gods blessed him with a baby almost immediately after you got married!"

"Though I've got my own theories about that," Tigress said with a smirk.

"What would those be?" Su Lin asked.

"C'mon, you know," Mei Xing smirked. "You've gone on enough dates with Po already—surely you know."

"Um, no, I'm not sure I do…"

Mei Xing arched an eyebrow. "You know what I mean. Have you two…been alone?"

Su Lin nodded. "Well, of course, we've gone on dates…"

"Have they led to anything?"

"Of course! Hugs, kisses, and cuddling…what?"

The felines had shared a look; had the pandas truly not taken that step? Was Su Lin still…?

"Su," Tigress asked. "Are you still a virgin?"

The panda didn't need to say anything. The bright crimson that exploded on her cheeks and the ashamed, uncomfortable look on her face was the only answer they needed.

"Su," Mei Xing reached her hand out to put on the panda's hand. "There's nothing wrong with that. If you're not ready, you're not ready. Its not like Po's pressuring you, right?"

"No," she shook her head, not meeting their eyes. "No, of course he hasn't. He's been very respectful. But sometimes, I wonder…if I'm not pretty enough? If that's the reason he's not so…you know, interested?"

"…Are you _insane_?" Tigress bluntly asked. "Su Lin, you're gorgeous, inside and out. Po's a lucky man…"

"But he hasn't said anything!" the panda cried. "He hasn't even _tried_ anything, or said that he _wanted_ to! Is it me? Am I not good enough, or pretty enough? I mean, maybe I could stand to lose a couple pounds…or ten. Or fifty."

"_No_," the Mei Xing said forcefully. "You're just fine the way you are."

"You're probably right, I guess…" she murmured, sounding unconvinced. "I mean…looks don't matter, right? I'm still pretty, aren't I?" Su Lin wondered.

At the precise moment she posed that question, Tai Lung proved he had the worst timing in the world when he walked into the room to retrieve something.

Su Lin rounded on him with the swiftness and intensity of a rabid wolf, "Tai Lung! Tell me I'm pretty!"

The snow leopard froze with a startled mew, his expression a mixture of shock, dismay and confusion. And not for the first time—sadly—he wondered just what the hell he had walked into.

"Erm…what?"

"Tell me I'm pretty," she pressed.

Tai Lung cast a quick glance at the other women in the room and finally settled on his most cautious answer:

"Were I unmarried, I would take you in a manly fashion."

"Because I'm pretty?" she asked hopefully.

"Because you're pretty," he affirmed.

Mei Xing had to hold in her laughter at her husband's uncomfortable expression; but it worked, as Su Lin looked much more relieved.

"May I ask why…?" the male snow leopard asked.

"No reason," the panda covered quickly. "I'd better get back to work."

"And I'm going to lie down for a while," Tigress yawned. "I still need as much sleep as possible. Is my husband returning home anytime soon?"

"A couple hours, right before his shift starts. In the meantime," he crouched next to his wife, resting his hand protectively over hers. "I intend to keep my promise to my wife."

Mei Xing gripped his hand tightly, a warm smile on her lips.

Tigress smiled, grudgingly admitting as she went to take a nap that maybe, just maybe, Tai Lung was a better husband than she'd originally given him credit.

* * *

Sonam was hard at work in the forge, slamming his hammer down against the anvil, working the red-hot iron as flat as he could manage it. Sparks flew, burning bright as they died upon the cool autumn air. Sweat dripped from the old cat's scarred brow as he lowered his hammer one last time, sticking his work into a bucket of cold water, the hot metal hissing like a nest of serpents. The one-eyed snow leopard pulled the work from the bucket and held it to the light of the open window.

"It's beautiful."

Sonam looked over his shoulder at the open doorway. Grunting in approval, he set the blade down. He had been commissioned to make two dozen _pudao_ for the magistrate's guards, and he had just finished the final blade. True to his philosophy, each weapon he created was as beautiful as it was deadly…he felt it was a fitting homage to his dearly loved, dearly departed wife.

"Thank ye, lad. I assume you're here for your parcel?"

"If it's finished," Dalang said as he stepping into the blistering hot forge. "You said that today was the day."

"So I did." The old snow leopard walked across the forge, batting ashes off his thick apron as he made his way to his Gallery. It was fondly called "The Art Gallery" by the Palace's inhabitants, and rightly so. It was a wall completely covered with the most beautiful pieces of metalwork the valley had ever seen: weapons, jewelry, and even everyday artifacts like nails, hinges, and locks were on display. Sonam walked up to one weapon and took it off of its holders. Turning, he held it to the tiger. "Go on."

Dalang accepted, feeling it in his hand. It looked like a simple bamboo staff, much like what Shifu used, but a bit shorter, perhaps two or three feet long. But it was strangely heavy…and had a niche in the middle. Curious, he scratched a claw on the niche.

"Pull against the ends, lad," Sonam told him.

Dalang obeyed and found—to his astonishment—that hidden within the bamboo staff where twin short swords, thin blades as sharp and shining as the Death God's scythe. The swords' sheathes were hidden inside the bamboo. Dalang was speechless.

"Holy cow."

"I take it you like it?" the snow leopard smirked triumphantly.

"Sonam…I've never seen anything like this! This is amazing…" Dalang twirled the blades around in his hand expertly, knowing full well that Sonam's one good eye was watching his every move, every flick of the wrist, every nimble finger caressing the bamboo hilts like a lover's touch… When the tiger paused, he held the blades to eye level and looked down the length. "Perfectly balanced…they feel lighter than I thought they'd be. And the blades are so straight… These are a piece of work! No wonder it took you so long."

The snow leopard grinned from the praise. "Every warrior needs a weapon to match his skills, you most of all."

Dalang's eyes stared out into space, and he sighed and sheathed the swords inside their bamboo casing. "I'm not a warrior…not anymore. I gave up that life."

"I understand; believe me, I do. But it never hurts to be prepared." The snow leopard's look softened. "I know what its like to have a young son, and wanting to do everything to protect him. I was taken by surprise; I hadn't trained for awhile, and Shen took advantage of that. I don't want t' see you caught off guard."

"Sonam," he said bluntly. "This is the Valley of _Peace_. Except for one failed invasion, it's had over a millennium of peace. I don't think we can expect any threats here…at least none like the Jiao…"

"Ye mustn't beat yourself up over that," the old cat said, looking guilty. "You don't choose your parents…well, had I been you, I would have chosen your mum, but your old dad…"

"Attila would've been an improvement."

"Probably."

Dalang thought it over a moment longer and sighed, "I know you put a lot of work into this, and I'd be stupid to refuse your…very generous gift."

"I just want ye to remember, boy," he said, placing a paternal hand on the tiger's shoulder, "I see ye as my son as much as Tenzin; considerin' how close both your mums were, you're family. I know as well as you do the likelihood of something happening…but I just want ye to be prepared…just in case."

"I couldn't bring this into my house; Tigress and I agreed when Shang was born that we don't want weapons in the house."

"He won't hurt himself with it. He's only six months old; how much trouble could he get into?"

Both males shared a chuckle…one that quickly died off when they truly thought about it.

"Maybe if I locked it in a closet…" Dalang ventured.

"That's what I'd do," Sonam agreed.

Dalang sighed and stuck the bamboo sheath in his belt, leaning back against a heavy wooden table. "So…how's work?"

"Tapering off; Shifu reckons I need a holiday."

"Might be a good idea. You just finished a six-month stint on commission work, and as far as I know, there aren't any special orders coming through."

"Not yet…" the old leopard arched an eyebrow and Dalang's flat look. "Fine, maybe a holiday would do some good."

"The Moon Festival's coming up soon—sounds like a good time to me. Work will pick back up afterwards."

"Aye, 'twill," he agreed, gazing over his wall of creations, each work like his own child. "Mayhap a good, very fine idea, what with my daughter-in-law expecting…me, a grandfather," he smiled fondly, yet chuckling in disbelief. "Never thought t'see a baby in my arms again, but gods know I wanted it. 'Tis a shame you and Tigress don't have the same luxury of grandparents to spoil your children."

"Auntie and Shifu make up for it," Dalang pointed out. "You know how they love to spoil him. Sure, Shifu pretends he doesn't care, but I see it, Tigress sees it; he plays with Shang and sneaks him treats whenever he thinks we're not looking."

"Tigress is his daughter," Sonam pointed out, picking up the bucket of water to douse the coals of the forge. "A complicated relationship, sure, but they're bound to reconcile and face the bad blood sooner or later."

"Sometimes, I get the impression he still doesn't like me."

"Let him boil his head—all you needed was his consent to marry her, and that's all you'll ever need, y'hear? Now," Sonam smirked. "If you wouldn't mind me accompanying you t' the restaurant…I've been craving Su Lin's cooking."

Dalang smirked back. "You're a little too predictable sometimes, you know that?"

Sonam scowled. "Cheeky."

* * *

Shifu had spent the better part of his day observing his students as they conducted classes, his stern gaze watching their every move. The Furious Five were all natural teachers, he discovered, and as much as he felt he needed to guide them—as he called it—he acquiesced that perhaps his idea of "guidance" had done far more harm than good.

Tai Lung, for example…the main example. Exhibit A in the case against the red panda's parenting skills. It had taken him two decades (and a nasty hit to the head) for him to see just how damaged the snow leopard had been by Shifu's idea of child-rearing. Had Shifu known that all he wanted—all he _needed_—was fatherly affection, and to be told he was loved, then the rampage might never have happened. Now Tai Lung had become an upstanding citizen, but in that case, it was more Wu Lien's doing than his own. Somehow, the female red panda had managed to soothe the tortured soul, then break it down, and build it back up from scratch, with choreography so minute and so practiced, Shifu wondered just how many times she had done it before.

Exhibit B: Tigress. Well, she had turned out just fine. But it had taken quite a bit of work on Wu's part to repair the heavily damaged relationship between the tiger master and her teacher. They had never been Father and Daughter, no matter how Shifu looked at it, wanted to believe it. In fact, Shifu had often wondered if the Tigress he had trained and raised was the _real_ Tigress. He didn't get his answer until after she married Dalang.

The girl he had rescued from the orphanage was not the woman he saw transformed like a blossoming bud, or a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. The breadth and scope of the love he saw between the two tigers had changed her so remarkably, and so alarmingly fast, that the red panda was loathe to admit that the grinning, laughing, carefree female he saw her becoming was the woman she was meant to be. He had thought she had changed to fit Dalang's ideal woman. But the fact was that the woman Tigress had become was the woman that had hidden herself away, until love had, quite literally, set her free.

Now, the same could also be said about Tai Lung. Somehow knowing that he had always been loved had done…something. Shifu wasn't sure what to believe it was. If Wu was right (and she typically was on the subject of her adopted nephew), the knowledge of his origins was what tamed the beast within. Sonam's arrival only cemented this belief. And, to be perfectly honest, Shifu was rather jealous of the relationship the biological father had with his son.

But there was no going back, he knew. They had been Master and Student longer than Father and Son, and Shifu had renounced even that. And now he had to live with that.

But Wu wasn't about to let him live in the past. She refused to talk about hers, beyond the little tidbits she revealed about her two most treasured students.

With a sudden realization, he groaned, remembering the date. He turned and abruptly left the training facility, rushing back to his quarters to grab a small box and make his way to the Sacred Hall of Warriors.

There in the red light of the setting sun, he saw his wife of one year standing beneath a portrait. He held back, giving her the space she needed.

Wu Lien sighed, her shoulders heaving with the exhalation. She removed wilting flowers from a vase, replacing them with bright yellow and orange chrysanthemums. Then she lit a candle on the altar and bowed low; when she straightened, she smiled at the portrait.

"If only you could see him now," she said quietly. "Your little Tenzin is about to make you a grandmother, you know. Oh, if only you had lived long enough to see it…It was such a beautiful wedding, I'm sure I've told you, and they love each other as much as you and Sonam did. I'm sure you would have loved Mei Xing, she's such a good girl, reminds me of you in a lot of ways."

Nima's portrait silently gazed down at her visitor, the pure rebellious _chi_ burning in her bright amber eyes, right above the sly, secretive pirate's smile. Wu would never be able to figure out how Crane had so masterfully depicted the female snow leopard; it was as if he had captured the essence of her soul and put it on parchment in ink. "I suppose this makes me a 'great-auntie' now, doesn't it?" Wu continued with a small laugh. The smile faded, replaced by an expression full of sorrow and regret. "But you should have been here. With all the knowledge we had of herbs and healing, we should have been able to save you.

"Sonam misses you every day, you know. I hardly think he ever stops thinking of you. And Tenzin—Tai Lung—he keeps asking me about you, wanting to know so much more. I know both of them have been by today already," she smiled at the fresh flowers and offerings left by the male snow leopards, "But I don't think there are enough offerings in the world that can show how much they miss you."

Wu took in a shaky breath and laid her offering on the small altar beneath the candles, setting the painted fan on its stand. Wu bowed again, fighting back tears. "Happy birthday, Nima."

The portrait was still and silent, as it always was, but somehow being close to it brought the old woman some closure. Visiting Nima's grave was, unfortunately, out of the question; its location had been lost long ago. It pained Shifu to think about it, how that poor woman's grave would go untended at New Year's, a fact he knew bothered Sonam and Tai Lung a great deal. The village of Tai Lung's birth had been completely razed to the ground. This was the only conceivable way to honor the late master of the Lotus Style.

Wordlessly, Shifu made his way over to the small altar to pay his respects. After all, she meant so much to his wife, and was the mother of the man he raised as a son. By extension, he owed her more than he could ever guess. Wu wiped her tears away with her sleeve as he set his own offering down.

"I was told it was her favorite," he said.

Wu smiled; it was a bag of tea leaves. "It was," she said quietly. "Black tea with crushed peach candies…apparently Mei Xing has come to like it as well."

"Probably not surprising," he nodded, lighting a candle and bowing. "Peaches were her favorite?"

Wu chuckled. "Since she was a child. Craved them in pregnancy, too. Poor Sonam—he had to walk _miles_ to find the blasted things. And now, well, you know as well as I do how often Tai Lung takes advantage of the Sacred Peach Tree when it's bearing fruit…"

"Even though he knows better," Shifu frowned. They shared a sigh, looking up at the portrait for a long moment before the aged master continued, "I know I've said it many times, but I owe her more than I ever knew. True, my feelings have been…rather conflicted, but when all is said and done, I don't think I have any regrets."

Wu only nodded in understanding. "If you'd known both his parents, I'm sure Tai Lung's behavior as a child could have been explained."

Shifu snorted. "If Sonam's character is any indication, and if the stories about Nima are true, it's no wonder he was such a little hellion."

"Kittens tend to be mischievous, you know," she smirked.

"Oh I know—I learned the hard way." After another pause, he cleared his throat. "I hope she realizes that, despite the mistakes he's made, I can't blame him. Perhaps he was not meant to be the Dragon Warrior, and that certainly wasn't my fault…but building up that expectation, withholding the father's love I should have given him, and condemning him…"

Wu took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "She forgives you. Sonam did, and he holds grudges longer than anyone I've ever met. Nima was rather headstrong, but she knows a sincere apology."

"You speak as if she's here with us."

"Of course she is, Shifu! I won't believe otherwise." She gazed back up at the portrait. "After all, one is not truly dead until they are forgotten."

His eyes flicked over to the shrine to his late master. Oogway's staff was firmly set on its base, displayed before the bank of white candles that illuminated the watercolor portrait above it. As far as the eternity of the soul was concerned, Wu had no idea how right she was. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. "Come, dinner should be ready soon. Would you like to visit the restaurant after?"

"And miss the opportunity to see our kids?" she smiled roguishly. "Like I would say no?"

* * *

Tai Lung knew his secret training with Po was a cause of both curiosity and concern for his wife, though she had never mentioned anything about it. He hated being so secretive about it, but he wasn't sure how to put his feelings into words.

Since the defeat of Jiao Shen and his army, both Po and Tai Lung had made the executive decision to train harder than ever. Po certainly needed much more work, and tutoring on the Thousand Scrolls of Kung Fu, which, being master of them, Tai Lung was a prime candidate as a teacher. But Po had his own reasons for extracurricular training, and, as a matter of fact, so did Tai Lung.

The two of them had waited until after Wu Lien and Shifu had left the Sacred Hall of Warriors before entering and heading straight for the scrolls. Po immediately began searching through them to locate his next lesson, while Tai Lung simply sat at his old desk, facing the scrolls yet staring into space.

"How about this: 'Dragon Style'?" Po asked him. "Or is that too advanced?"

"You breezed through the Five's styles; Dragon style should be the next step," his feline companion replied absently. Po wasn't paying close attention to his friend's responses, and continued scanning the various subjects.

"So I'm at what, scroll 294?"

"Two hundred ninety-five."

"Oh, cool! Okay, here's Dragon Style, but should I try out the Eagle Claw, or something a little more…" he searched for the word.

"Bad-arse."

"Yeah, that. You okay?" he asked, finally turning to look at the snow leopard. Tai Lung had stopped staring at the scrolls, his attention now focused on the old desk. He ran his fingers along old claw marks, scars left over from times of frustration when he couldn't perfect a particular move. So many memories here. Shifu had taught him to read here, taught him his writing and arithmetic, and instructed him on the more basic lessons the scrolls provided. It was here that Tai Lung had spent hours—sometimes days, without rest—reading, memorizing, and mastering each and every single scroll on those shelves.

And for what? What was his ultimate accomplishment, he asked himself ruefully. He had mastered those scrolls, intent on being a kung fu warrior, a master in his own right…and now he was a cook. A short-order cook. And that hurt his pride. A lot.

"How the mighty have fallen…" he sighed.

Somehow, Po knew exactly what he meant. Much time spent in training, and generally just hanging out, had given the panda an uncanny sixth sense about the feline's moods, and sometimes his thoughts. It was enough to make Tai Lung wonder if the Dragon Warrior could somehow read his mind.

"You haven't fallen, Tai," he said. "Sure, you stumbled, but you didn't fall."

"How can you say that?" he asked, looking his friend in the eye. "My whole life was kung fu, and I was told—and believed—for so long that I was destined for greatness. And now…well, look at me."

"I am. You've done awesome things!"

"I'm a cook, Po, a _cook_," he growled. "Where's the honor in that?" he winced as soon as the words left his mouth, avoiding eye contact with he was sure was an unhappy panda. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for…"

"So you're not happy with being a _chef_?" Po flatly asked, emphasizing the last word; he found the term "cook" slightly offensive.

"Yes. No. I don't know," he groaned, holding his head in his hands. "I'm so conflicted, so confused…both my parents were warriors, my mother was a master, my father is a master swordsman. I should have been a great warrior, unlike anything the world has ever seen."

"But you already are," Po said, putting the scrolls back on the shelf. "You're the Phoenix Warrior, remember?"

Tai Lung scoffed, "Bullocks. You were granted your title; I have nothing to prove such a claim. No one outside of everyone here in the Jade Palace actually believes that…so what's the point in my believing it?"

The panda stood by uncomfortably, unsure how to respond to the snow leopard's lack of faith. Tai Lung continued, "Sure, I defeated Jiao Shen, but I didn't do it alone. I should have had the ability to—I'm the greatest warrior to ever live, aren't I? Isn't that what everyone says, what everyone thinks? And I needed help to take down a man twice my age?"

"In your defense, he was in great shape for a man his age."

"Aside from that, defeating him…I should have been able to do it alone."

"And that's your problem," Po said bluntly. "You've always done it alone; you've always felt you didn't need anyone else."

"Because I didn't _have_ anyone else, remember?"

They fell into an uncomfortable silence until Tai Lung sighed raggedly. "No matter what happened back then, no matter how Auntie tried, I couldn't break down my pride. And thinking I wasted my youth studying for something I never attained…that I built up my whole life around a stupid dream…and now I'm doing something I never thought I'd ever do, something that should be beneath me…I don't know how to cope with that."

"How can you say you wasted your life?"

"Think about it—I busted my arse until I was eighteen, then spent the next twenty years in prison, and it wasn't until two years ago that my life started to turn around, when I'm approaching the middle of my life…"

"So _that's_ what this is," Po brightened with acknowledgement. "This is a mid-life crisis."

The snow leopard groaned, "Oh _gods_, please don't call it that—I'm not _that_ old."

"What else could it be?"

"Po, you're well into your twenties—what do you know about a mid-life crisis?"

"Well, my dad went through one," the panda sheepishly said.

"Did he? How'd he get out of it?"

"He went into partnership with Ms. Wu."

"Ah."

"See, everyone goes through periods like this. I gotta admit, though, you're the _last_ guy I'd expect to see doubting himself."

"Maybe Auntie didn't succeed after all," he crossed his arms sullenly. "I'm not as arrogant as I used to be, but I have enough pride left in me that the idea of me doing menial labor…" he raggedly sighed again, turning to gaze back at his mother's portrait. Then his eyes snapped over to Oogway's shrine. "I don't know what's wrong with me. For the first time, I'm doing something constructive with my life, something that helps rather than hurts. But it doesn't seem good enough."

"In other words, _you_ don't feel good enough."

_Thanks for hitting the nail on the head, panda._ "Exactly."

"C'mon, what's with the doubting here? _I'm_ the one who should have the low self-esteem, right?" Po asked. "I'm not like you; I'm not like the Five. Like I told Oogway, I don't have claws, or wings, or venom…"

"And even Mantis has those pincers."

"Is that what they're called? I've just been calling them 'thingies'."

"Rather eloquent of you."

"Thanks. But anyway…the point is I had to find my own strength, be my own hero. And I think that you _are_ a hero now, and you've proved yourself to be one. So sure, maybe being a _chef_," he emphasized again, "isn't the most glamorous job in the world, but doesn't it still give you focus? Doesn't it make you feel better at the end of the day, y'know, feel like you accomplished something?"

Tai Lung thought about it a moment, then quietly replied, "Yes, yes it does." He was silent for a good long moment as he let it sink in. Then he looked back up at the wall of scrolls. "But I remember what I said after Jiao Shang's funeral. I don't know what being the Phoenix Warrior really means, or even if it comes with any new powers or…something. Let's face it, Po, you've improved in leaps and bounds since Oogway gave you the Dragon Scroll, and it's almost supernatural the way you've picked up kung fu. You're a natural at it. You're mastering some of these scrolls faster than I did. After the signs, the hints that I might be a warrior of the same caliber, with the same power and prestige, you'd think I'd feel different."

Po shrugged. "I don't look at it that way. Sure, I thought I'd feel different after I became the Dragon Warrior…but truth is, I didn't. I still don't. The Dragon Scroll is just a thing, and objects don't change people. People change people, experiences change them. It's kinda like on your birthday—you don't feel a year older, even though you are. You think you should feel different, but you don't, but that doesn't change the fact that you are what you are. The only thing that changed about me…was confidence."

"But that's the last thing I need," Tai Lung said. "My over-confidence cost me the scroll, and caused me to underestimate you and lose, terribly. Thing is…I don't know what's missing. I should be content, I should be happy because I have everything a man could want: a house, a home, a loving wife, a child on the way, friends I can count on, a family that supports me, and a job…but I don't know that I feel complete."

Po chewed on his lip and wondered, then placed a hand on the snow leopard's shoulder. "Hey, that's okay. You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out, I just know it."

"I hope so." After another long moment staring at the scrolls, he finally turned back to Po. "Which scrolls were you thinking of, again?"

"Uh…Dragon Style, or Eagle Claw."

"Dragon Style," Tai Lung said with finality. "Three years as the Dragon Warrior, and not knowing Dragon Style? Completely ludicrous. Start reading it tonight, we'll go over the finer points of technique in the morning."

* * *

The wolf made it back to the compound late that night—or was it early that morning?—and crept over to his bunk. There were six other wolves who worked for Lord White Wolf, and all of them were seasoned fighters, bandits, and two of them were assassins. Lang—the unfortunate newbie who'd been sent to find an assassin—was a farmer's son, who was stupid enough to go to the warlord for monetary assistance, but smart enough to know it might come back to bite him. Disregarding the instincts that told him what he was doing was stupid, he realized far too late that he was in way over his head.

Lang looked no different from the other half dozen wolves in those quarters; he had a dark grey pelt and dark eyes, but the key difference he had with the others was his scrawny farm-boy build and the still-youthful light in his eyes; he wasn't even that old to begin with, and still wet behind the ears. Otherwise, he considered himself quite the coward, especially in front of the rest of the pack. Lang may not have been well-educated, but he was smart enough to know the pecking order. In this pack, he was the Omega, the lowest of the low. Lord White Wolf was without a doubt the Alpha, the one in charge, the one who got the biggest shares of every pillaging. The half dozen under his employ (plus all the numerous guardsmen) were the Betas, who stuck around only because the pay was that good.

As soon as Lang crawled under the worn blanket covering his bunk, he was rudely roused by someone kicking him in the back, right above the kidney. The scrawny wolf hit the floor with a loud thud, and he immediately curled into a fetal position, fighting down the tears of agony that had sprung into his eyes.

"Hey, _twerp_," the assailant snarled. "The hell have _you_ been?"

Lang sucked down air to keep himself from crying in front of the others, who had roused themselves to watch. Like their ancient ancestors, the other five wolves circled the larger wolf and the submissive Omega, the light of blood and violence in their sharp, soulless eyes. The larger assailant, Zi Hao, was the sturdiest and strongest of the half dozen, a well-seasoned bandit who was used to getting his way.

Lang looked around the circle, identifying the others. There was Tan Lan, and Yu Wang, two short, slightly built wolves, who were the resident assassins, their smaller statures ideal for sneaking in and out of their targets' homes without detection. Completing the circle was Xu Jiu, Lan Duo and Bao Nu, the last of whom lived up to his terrifying name. Bao Nu easily had the most murders under his belt of them all.

Lang tried propping himself up on one arm, holding his side as pain surged up his spine. He coughed and sucked in air through his clenched teeth.

"I asked you a question, shrimp," Zi Hao snarled. "Where the hell were you?"

"The Wolf's Head," Lang coughed.

The stunned silence wasn't lost on the new kid, who dared to look up at the others. Tan Lan, an assassin and sometime thief armed with various knives, stared at him incredulously. "You went all the way to the Wolf's Head Inn? _Alone_?"

Lang nodded weakly.

Tan Lan laughed, "This one's got bigger balls than I thought. Not even _I_ would go there alone, at this time of night. Nasty creatures live out there…"

"What'd you go all the way there for?" Lan Duo, a bandit skilled with pole arms interrogated. Of the six, Lan Duo was probably the least likely to kill him…at least Lang hoped so.

Lang coughed again, looking in the Beta's direction. "I…I found a guy who'll take the job."

Six pairs of ears perked up with interest, and six voices added their astonished questions.

"You did?"

"No way."

"That's impossible!"

"No fuckin' way!"

"I can't believe you found someone that stupid…"

"…Or crazy."

"I'm pretty sure he's nuts," Lang said, finally managing to stand despite the pain in his back. "He thought our lord's offer was too little for the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung."

Xu Jiu, the heaviest of the six, arched a curious brow. "…Too _little_? How much did you offer?"

"The highest Lord White Wolf was willing to pay," Lang answered truthfully. Lying would have only gotten him killed. "Weird thing is, he seemed more interested in the bounty on Jiao Dalang's head."

"Who wouldn't be?" Tan Lan asked with a sadistic smirk. "Sure, not as tempting as the money from killing Tai Lung and Po Ping combined, but still…the money's good enough."

"You think this guy's one of Jiao's enemies?" Lan Duo asked.

"Of _course_ he is," Yu Wang, the other assassin, hissed. "Who _isn't_ an enemy of the Jiao? Shen touched too many of our lives, and frankly, I'm pissed the son of a bitch didn't suffer more than he did."

"The fact remains," Lan Duo interrupted, "Is that Tai Lung and the panda are no longer our concern."

"Oh, they still concern us," Zi Hao declared. "Because if the guy the Twerp here found can't do his job or just takes the money and runs, it's still on us to take them out. Which reminds me, Twerp, who's the guy?"

"He…he didn't tell me his name." Which was true; Lang didn't need him to tell him. The small wolf wasn't stupid enough to tell the whole truth, lest his brethren turn on him like…well, like wolves. "I just asked the bartender there, and he recommended the guy, said he's the only one crazy enough for the job."

"What's he like?"

_Women…I think,_ Lang thought to himself, but thought it wiser to not crack jokes when a much bigger wolf was glaring at him with a most unholy look in his eyes. "Uh…well, he spoke like a Russian…or Siberian, one of the two. Some kinda northerner. Pretty intimidating, looked kinda old, but didn't act like it, you know? Had this look in his eyes, like he was looking at me like I was prey. I didn't see any weapons on him, but, well…you guys ever hear of Amur leopards?"

Bao Nu sucked in a breath; he knew, Lang knew as much when he saw the brawny wolf's hands shaking. Zi Hao, however, was blessedly ignorant. "Amur leopards? Yeah, I've heard of them. Heard they're crazier than Amur tigers."

"Not crazy," Yu Wang said. "Just…not very civilized."

"In what way?"

"Well…they're supposed to be worse than Huns. They don't exactly follow laws like we do."

Zi Hao gave the assassin a nonplussed look.

"Seriously," Yu Wang said. "I'm talking rules of engagement here. They fight differently, more savagely. There's one Amur leopard in particular I've heard of…"

Lang felt the blood draining from his face. Zi Hao, thankfully, brushed off Yu Wang's ruminations.

"Whatever. The twerp managed to find some dumb schmuck to handle this job so we don't have to. When's the guy coming?"

"A couple days," Lang shook, not liking the look in Zi Hao's eyes. "He wanted to talk over a contract."

"A _contract_? Shit, you got us a real professional!" Xu Jiu, the resident swordsman, laughed. "C'mon Hao, you can't deny that a contracted killer will do the job."

He had a point, and loathe as he was to admit it, Zi Hao said, "I'll say…Can't believe I'm saying this, but the twerp actually did something right for once."

Lang let out a relieved breath.

"Yeah, yeah, lucky him," Tan Lan snorted. "He got lucky."

"You're just pissed it didn't work out with the Wu Sisters," Lan Duo snorted disinterestedly.

Zi Hao snickered, "Female assassins, what next? What'd you tell them, Wang, that they just walked off and left you hanging? Little cowards."

"But we didn't want to fight the Dragon Warrior or Tai Lung either," Lang said. "So doesn't that make us cowar—"

Lang choked as Zi Hao grabbed him by the throat and slammed him up against the wall. The smaller wolf writhed and struggled in the bandit's grip, gasping for air as the hand around his throat tightened. Zi Hao got right in his face and snarled, "If you _ever_ call me a coward again, I will spill your guts right all over this floor. And something tells me you need to be reminded of your place, you little dog."

Swiftly, Zi Hao punched the small wolf in the gut, forcing the air out of his lungs even as his face turned blue.

Lan Duo tapped the ringleader on the shoulder. "C'mon Hao, let him go. If you kill him, his debts become yours, plus, you'd have to pay his purchase price, too."

Zi Hao thought about it, then snarled in frustration and finally dropped the smaller wolf to the floor. Lang landed hard on hands and knees, choking and sputtering, holding his throat as he wheezed and sucked down air. But to add insult to injury—literally—Zi Hao spit on him and smacked him in the head.

"You better remember your place, little dog, before White Wolf does it for you."

Lang hung his head, just letting the verbal abuse come, but Zi Hao's last word was by far the worst. Being called a "dog" by a fellow wolf was the worst insult in lupine society, as it demonstrated an even lower rank than the Omega. The small wolf knelt there on the floor as the other wolves returned to their bunks, and waited until he heard their snores before picking himself up and limping back to his cot. But before he lay down, he felt eyes on him in the darkness. He looked up and saw Lan Duo watching him; Lang's skin began to crawl, not liking the expression, even in the dim light that came from the bandit's candle.

"You want a piece of advice, kid?" Lan Duo asked.

Lang paused, then nodded eagerly.

Lan Duo picked up the candle next to his bed, bringing it closer to his face. "Learn when to keep your gods-damned mouth shut; it just might save you someday."

He blew out the candle.

* * *

So yeah, there's the second chapter, hope you enjoyed it. Please remember to Read and Review.


	3. Chapter 3: Schisms

And here is Chapter 3. I'm keeping my promise with long chapters here. It looks like, in the future, my chapters may end up being as long as some of Nievelion's (you see the effect you have on me, Nieve?), which benefits you all, certainly. As I love drama, this will be another chapter full of exactly that. As for updates...yeah, they're going to be sporadic. My apologies for that. Anyway, enough of my moaning: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, it is the property of Dreamworks Animation Studios. All OCs depicted in this fic, however, do belong to me, so please do not use them without my permission.

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Chapter 3: Schisms

* * *

Su Lin fidgeted in her new dress, something she had thrown together a few days before. She absently picked at her sleeve, sighing nervously. Tonight was the night, she was certain. Tonight _had_ to be the night. What Tai Lung had said yesterday was uplifting…and extremely flattering. If he, Tai Lung, easily the handsomest example of his species (at least as far as the female panda's experience with snow leopards went), thought her attractive, _surely_ that meant Po found her attractive too? But for the life of her, she couldn't ascertain why her boyfriend, after one and a half years, had not made a single move. Sure, they had kissed, made out, hugged and caressed, but it never seemed to go beyond that. Was she giving off the wrong signals, she wondered? Or was she not cluing in on _his_ signals?

Her nervousness didn't help. Why should she be nervous? It wasn't as if this was her first date, but, she realized with ever increasing dread…she was nervous about the mystery of what was to come. She had no idea what she was doing, no experience whatsoever—was she out of her mind? And what if he rejected her? Or what if he ignored her signals? Should she just come out and say it? Oh, but how could she! Su Lin was by no means a direct creature, something she envied her feline neighbors for. True, Dalang and Mei Xing tried to avoid conflicts whenever possible, but that didn't stop them—or their spouses—from saying what they meant, and meaning what they said.

_Oh, grow a backbone already!_ she chastised herself as she looked in the mirror. The female panda turned this way, and that way, viewing herself at three-quarter angles, then in profile, sighing and frowning at her own 'padding'. She _could_ perhaps stand to loose a couple pounds, she thought as she ran her hand over her stomach. Su Lin was realistic though; she knew she would never be as slender as Tigress and Mei Xing. Heck, both her parents had been "big-boned" as the case went, as were her siblings. And she supposed there was a reason they were called _giant_ pandas.

She turned all the way around, took a few steps, then looked over her shoulder at her back side and frowned again. Oh, why did she make this dress?! It didn't flatter her at all! The darts were in the wrong place, the waist too high, and the skirt too tight, leaving little room for her hips to move, and too much room around the bust and neck…_this was a huge mistake_. The only positive thing worth mentioning was the color, a teal blue that Po said brought out the warm brown of her eyes.

Sighing again, this time fretfully, she smoothed the skirt over her thighs and anxiously waited, sitting on the edge of her bed. Actually, it had been Po's bed, before he moved up to the Jade Palace, permanently. Because she had nowhere else to go, Mr. Ping graciously offered his son's old room, even before she asked. She smiled; it was easy to see where Po got his generosity.

After their landlord had essentially kicked them out of the short-lived "Aunt Wu's Dim Sum and Then Some", Ping had opened his doors to the unfortunate souls. The restaurant and family apartments had been crowded for a good long while, until Auntie Wu had moved up to the Jade Palace to be with her husband Shifu, and Mei Xing had married Tai Lung. Su Lin did not feel belonged in the Jade Palace, as she was decidedly _not_ a kung fu warrior, despite what Po had taught her. And she certainly didn't want to move in with the two newlywed couples—she would have certainly felt like a cart's third wheel! Before this conundrum moved her to extreme debilitating anxiety, Mr. Ping offered to convert Po's old room into Su Lin's new residence.

There hadn't been much to change. A fresh coat of plaster to the holes in the wall, polished floorboards and a fix to the leaky roof were all she was comfortable with. The crude drawings Po had left on the walls, artifacts of her boyfriend's happy childhood, she couldn't bear to cover with fresh whitewash. Nor could she part with the bed—if it was good enough for him, surely it was good enough for her.

She did add a few traces of her own personality, to make it her own space. She hung a couple paintings, placed fresh flowers around the room, and almost always had the window open to allow sunlight into the room. And then there was the full-length mirror, where she was still studying herself.

He would be there any minute. She took in a deep breath and started to pace. Ping had given her the night off to go on this date; she suspected Po had to ask Shifu's permission to leave the Jade Palace for the occasion, despite the fact the red panda had relaxed his controlling personality. Perhaps, she thought with a blush and a smile, the red panda had plans of his own that same evening…

She jumped when a familiar knock rapped against the door. "Coming!" She looked herself over one last time, sighed, then forced a smile and went to answer the door.

"Hey sweetie," she smiled.

"Hey, babe," Po grinned, hugging her and giving her a sweet kiss. "I missed you."

"You saw me just yesterday!" she giggled.

"Still, I missed you," he said, gently tightening the hug. "You were all I could think about, all day."

"Oh please don't, Po, you're making be blush!"

"But you're cute when you blush," he said, pressing his palm tenderly upon her cheek. Su Lin took a moment to take in his appearance. He had certainly made quite the effort—more effort than herself, she wondered?—to look good for her, wearing new, freshly pressed clothes he had gotten from the last major festival: a forest green shirt and darker green trousers. My, he did look quite handsome tonight! The greatest accessory that brought his whole look together, she thought, was that warm, loving smile and his shining green eyes…"You ready?"

She nodded, grabbing a shawl for the chilly night. "Ready as I'll ever be," she said softly.

* * *

"He's got it bad."

"You think?"

"Totally; did you hear that? 'You're all I could think about'? He's deprived."

"Don't say that! Po's not the kind of person to do something like that."

"I'm not disagreeing with you…but just when are they gonna _do it_, already?"

Tigress sighed, fighting down the inevitable eye-roll at her husband's comments. Dalang had stuck his head out the open window to listen in, having heard the entire exchange between the pandas. _When did he become an eavesdropper?_ she wondered. "Maybe they believe in waiting until marriage, did you think of that?"

Dalang glanced back at her, "_You_ didn't think that."

"I _didn't_ at first, because I thought that with all the time they were alone…well, you'd think…"

"Yeah, but you know as well as I do how notorious pandas are for the libidos."

Tigress looked up from nursing Baby Shang to give her husband a curious look. He explained, "Real severe _lack_ of libido."

"Not the way I see it," Tigress replied. "I don't think you're giving them enough credit. Maybe they're just not ready for that step."

"_We_ were ready for that step long before we got married," he pointed out.

"Need I remind you how notorious _tigers_ are for their raging urges?" she smirked.

"Not at all," he smirked suggestively. After a pause, he added, "You know…it _has_ been over a year since…you know…"

Tigress blushed, hiding a coy smile. "Why, I have no idea what you could mean, Husband."

"I think you know _exactly_ what I mean, Wife." The purr in his voice was sending delightful shivers through her body.

Her smile widened, teasingly, the blush deepening. "I think you may need to remind me…" She looked up in surprise when he was suddenly looming over her, a mischievous light in his eyes above a deeply suggestive grin.

"Auntie told us to wait for three months after Shang's birth…it's been _six_ months, you know," he pointed out.

"You don't say? Six months already; when did that happen?" Tigress was absolutely unable to hide the grin at his desperate, needy gaze.

"Damn it, woman, don't do this to me."

"Don't do what?" she pulled Shang away from her breast to burp him, then quickly covered herself, fighting the blush as Dalang stared unabashedly. Shang, however, was in quite the mood to play, despite it being nearly his bedtime. Well, as much as Tigress loved her son, she loved her husband too. Very much. As a matter of fact, he _did_ have a point…it had been a while since their last…and she was feeling the withdrawal about as strongly as her husband was.

She surprised the older male tiger by going to the door of their room instead of laying Shang down in his crib by their bed. Dalang audibly groaned in frustrated defeat, feeling that, once again, the opportunity had slipped right through his fingers. Then, to his amazement—and hope—he heard Tigress saying,

"I know this is short notice, but would you mind watching Shang for a couple hours?"

The potential babysitter paused, then Dalang recognized the drawl. "Oh, why not?" Tai Lung asked. "Good practice, isn't it?"

"Very," Tigress agreed. "He's already fed, had his bath, all that's left is to play until he falls asleep. He should do that on his own when he's tired enough."

Tai Lung paused. "As his crib's in your room…should I knock first?"

"We'd both appreciate it. Thanks."

Dalang's heart—among other parts of his anatomy—swelled with hope, his heart hammering in his chest. Was he…were they…really? He got his answer when Tigress walked back into the room, closed the door…and turned the key in the lock. The audible _click_ was the only mechanism he needed to pounce on her, kissing her roughly and pawing at her clothes. She gasped as he groped and caressed her, pressing his body hard against hers, sending pleasurable shivers coursing through her body as she returned the favor. Just as desperately, she tore at his clothes, licking and nipping at his sensitive neck, then gasped when he grabbed her wrists and pinned her against the door.

"Anything in particular you want, _Mrs_. Jiao?" he smirked wickedly, passion burning in his eyes. Tigress purred; she _loved_ it when he called her that. She thought about it a moment, then asked with a blush and sly smile, "Perhaps, _Mr_. Jiao, you might know where we put the straps?"

He grinned and pulled her over to the bed, reaching under the mattress for the items in question. Taking her hands, he pinned her to the mattress and kissed her hard, breaking away for a breathless moment to declare, "Gods-dammit, I missed you!"

* * *

Mei Xing smiled when Tai Lung entered their room, holding a very playful cub in his arms. "Hey, Trouble," she grinned as he sat next to her. "Oh, and you brought Shang, too!"

Her husband chucked her chin with his knuckle, growling with a playful smile, "Quiet you."

She giggled as she accepted the squirming infant into her arms, holding him close. "Aww, he looks tired…"

"He'd _better_ be," Tai Lung said, laying back on the bed with a groan. "How can a six-month-old have so much energy?"

"Just wait until _ours_ gets to be that age."

"Gods almighty; are _we_ in trouble!" They shared a laugh as they watched over the playful tiger cub, who kept trying to gum Tai Lung's fingers. "I'm grateful he hasn't got teeth yet."

"The teething will be the worst. You know a good remedy for that, don't you?" she asked.

"Rub some _baijiu_ on their gums."

Mei Xing stared at him. "How did you know that?"

He shrugged, putting Shang on the floor and allowed the cub to stalk and pounce on his tail. "Shifu said he used it on me; he also used it when I was older, whenever I had a toothache, though he obviously used a little bit more. I remember I got a rather nice buzz from it."

"That explains a few things," she teased.

"Quiet you."

She giggled and watched the cub try and chase the fluffy spotted tail. "Why are you doing that?"

"To develop his predatory skills; I wager Tigress wants to train him in kung fu, so this is a logical step…"

"How is it logical?"

"I don't know; that's how Shifu taught…me…" Tai Lung trailed off, so lost in his thoughts that the pain of infant claws sinking into his tail didn't immediately occur to him…until he let out a strained noise and sank his claws into the sheets, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out. Baby Shang, completely oblivious, had opted to curling up and cuddling the fuzzy—and hurting—appendage like it was a stuffed toy.

"Honey?" Mei Xing ventured. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he gritted out. "I'm _perfectly_ copacetic."

"Then why did you trail off like that?"

Tai Lung looked down at Shang, who had suddenly become rather drowsy and had curled up on the rug, still hugging the snow leopard's tail. "I think I understand why Dalang was so nervous about fatherhood…he didn't exactly have the best role model. I wonder though, if I might be just like Shifu…"

"What's wrong with that?" she asked, scooting closer to him. "You turned out alright."

"But to what end?" he asked. "I tried so hard to live up to his lofty expectations, and when I failed it cost me twenty years of my life I can never get back. What if I make the same mistakes he did?"

Mei Xing silently wrapped her arms around him. Wordlessly, he draped an arm around her shoulders. "Tai-Tai," she purred, "You are going to be a _great_ father. You see how all the little kids love coming by the café after school, just to see you? Like little Chin Fu? Kids love you, and you love kids…you'll be fine. Hell, you'll do a better job than _my_ dad did, I'll tell you that."

They trailed off together, watching Shang finally fall asleep. Mei Xing quietly confessed, "I wonder…I wonder if they even care about what happened to me. After they sold me to my ex, I begged them to let me come home, to dissolve the marriage. They ignored me. I haven't spoken to them since I was eighteen. I wonder if they even care that I'm happy now."

"Let's not think about that," Tai Lung said as he reached down to pick up the sleeping infant; he was careful to cradle the child's body correctly in his arms. "My feeling is that if they did, they would have tried finding you by now. I don't care what your old man's reasoning for marrying you off was…I can't forgive him for it. Ever. Especially knowing all that happened to you. And I swear on my mother's grave, if I _ever_ see that bastard again…"

"Baby, please don't," she urged. "I don't know about you, but _I've_ got a problem with you going back to prison."

He sighed and nuzzled her. "Fine…but is that code for me leaving him to you?"

She shook her head. "Punching him was enough payback. Well, as legal a payback as I could get."

He chuckled, handing the baby over to her to let her hold him. Mei Xing sighed happily, "I can't wait…as nervous as I am to give birth, I can't wait until it's _our_ baby I'm holding, you know?"

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek, his hand gently rubbing her round stomach. "Soon, love, soon…"

The crash of something falling from across the house caused both snow leopards to jump. Mei Xing shared a look with her husband, then both looked down at Shang, who had been roused by the loud noise.

"Should we give them another hour?" she asked.

"I would," he nodded.

* * *

Su Lin still fidgeted with her dress. Everything was set, everything was perfect, the perfect time for her to make her move…but she was scared stiff. Po had taken her to the Valley's largest lake for their date, a candlelit picnic, just the two of them, in one of the more secluded spots. Now that night had fallen, the fishermen had all returned to their homes, pleasure boats back to their docks, and all other visitors had gone home to be with their families. The two pandas were likely the only people for a good half mile, but that didn't ease her nerves.

She sat next to him on the blanket, the remainder of their dinner gone cold as they cuddled beneath the stars. She wrapped an arm as far around his belly as she could, nuzzling his chest and she sighed, listening to his heartbeat. To her surprise, and her wonder, his heart was racing. But should she say something? He had been awfully quiet all evening, and rather awkward too. It was like they were on their first date all over again.

For the life of her she couldn't figure out what the problem was. Not only did Po appear completely distracted, but he also seemed particularly distant, too. He hesitated when she tried to kiss him, and stiffened when she hugged him. A horrible thought entered her mind: did he not love her anymore? If that was the case, should she even bother to try…what she had planned to try? What if—gods forbid!—she went through with it and they broke up? Could she live with the shame of it all?

"You okay, Su honey?" he asked, shocking her out of her reverie. "You're pretty quiet tonight."

She forced a smile and looked back up at the stars. "I'm fine, just…a little bit chilly." Su Lin knew she was a terrible liar, but somehow Po seemed to accept it.

"Why didn't you say something? Here, you can take my jacket…"

"Oh, I couldn't, what if you get a cold?"

"I'm good," he smiled, draping his jacket on her shoulders and kissed her forehead. "You're more important to me, anyway."

_But __**how**__ important am I to you?_ she miserably wondered. She looked back up at the stars, as if seeking guidance for how to proceed. All she got was complete silence. Frowning, she fought down her thudding heart and lightly quaking body. Okay, if she did make a move, if they _did_ take that step…what would it ultimately mean? Hadn't Auntie said that _that_ wasn't love, just…an expression of physicality? At least Su Lin knew Po wasn't after _that_, otherwise he would—_they_ would—have done something by now.

But perhaps that was being too hard on him. Po had to focus on his training, surely, and he had filial obligations…its not as if she came first, and she knew that. Family came first, then kung fu, then her; she knew the hierarchy, and didn't question it. It was Po's life, Po's future. But—and she felt terribly selfish for even asking—what about her? What about _her_ life, what about _her_ future? And was the male panda sitting next to her the key to her future?

It was getting late, and she knew it. It was now or never. But…how to proceed? Where to start? _Darn it, what did Mei-Mei do to get Tai?_

She cuddled closer to him, nuzzling him just hard enough to get his attention as her hand gently massaged his stomach. Her heart pounded, wondering how he'd react…then smiled as his own hands moved to her waist, moving their bodies so that he could kiss her, long and hard. She outwardly sighed with satisfaction, and inwardly with relief. Her heart pounded harder as his hands tentatively moved to her hips, which sent a surprising jolt of pleasure through her body. Po had never touched her like this befo—she gasped against his lips when his hand moved further down and gently groped her backside, but just as soon, he began to pull away.

_Oh, no you don't!_

She grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled him closer, her clearly surprised boyfriend letting out a soft, astonished noise, then a louder pleasured moan as he pulled her closer. Oh yes, this felt much nicer, she thought as she completely gave in to her instincts, lying back as he deepened the kiss, both closing their eyes and moaning in bliss. When Po broke the kiss to breathe, he looked down at her with mingled astonishment…and desire.

"Not that I'm complaining," he panted, "But what brought this on?"

Su Lin blushed, casting her gaze down shyly. "I…I just wanted to show you how much I care about you, how much I love you…" she paused, timidly looking back up at him. "Don't you like it? I can stop if—"

"No! I mean, uh, no, I like it. I like it a lot," he bashfully grinned. "Just um, let me know if…if y'know, you get uncomfortable or anything, okay?"

She nodded, smiling again as he leaned down to kiss her. His lips ghosted over hers as he whispered, "I love you." She wrapped her arms around his neck and held him there as they deepened the embrace. All her fears and trepidations of what was to come evaporated, melting away as his lips caressed hers, as his hands moved down her sides and to her hips. Her body felt electrified in a way she had never felt before.

Sure, they had kissed before, and yes, they had also made out…many times, she thought with an inward blush. But it had never gotten to the level they were quickly ascending. There was a burning, aching heat deep inside her, begging for more. Her wish was granted when Po broke away to nuzzle and kiss her sensitive neck. Su Lin moaned softly, biting her lip as his lips moved down to tug at her collar, sending electrifying jolts up her spine. She couldn't think, couldn't speak, and it was glorious. Only a moment later, however, she felt an entirely different surge in her brain as his hand moved down from her hip to her thigh and down her leg, then slowly worked its way back up, taking her dress hem with it…

That was when the thought hit her so quickly and so hard that she literally gasped and shot up, scrambling away from him. She panted, grasping her collar closer to her neck, which still tingled from his gentle kisses, even as her mind was spinning in a tumultuous whirlwind. Her body told her she was ready, her mind told her she was ready, and her heart ached for him so much it frightened her. What had stopped her was the most sobering and terrifying thought:

If her mother were still alive…what would she think of this…this _sin_?

Furthermore, if she had gone through with this…what would that make her? _A slut_, she realized, fighting down nausea and guilty tears, _a slut, and a harlot…Mama wouldn't be proud of what I'm doing…what was I thinking?_

"I…I'm feeling really tired," she offered as an excuse. "And cold, too. Can we go back?"

Po looked positively confused, dejected and…oh, he looked angry too! Su Lin turned her face away from him, fighting back tears. What had she done? There was only one name for the kind of girl she was now, and it wasn't polite even in the worst kind of company! Now Po was angry at her, and surely had lost all semblance of high opinion for her. That much was evident as he sighed heavily and stood.

"Okay. Okay, I'll walk you home."

"I…I'm sorry, for…for cutting this short." _You have no idea, Po, you just have no idea!_

"It's okay," he said unconvincingly. "Really, its fine. It is gettin' kinda chilly anyway, and I don't want ya gettin' sick or anything."

Lowering her gaze, she helped him pack up and stood to leave. The two pandas didn't exhibit the kind of open affection they had shared at the beginning of their date, the hand-holding, kissed cheeks and shared shy smiles. Instead, they walked through the village shoulder-to-shoulder, evoking the type of overwhelming silence that comes with one or both people wishing like mad to say something to the other, but either too scared or too angry to say anything, lest they say something they regret. By the time the couple got back to the Long and Feng, the two houses were dark and silent, all the inhabitants having gone to bed long before. Su Lin took the picnic basket from Po and placed it in the kitchen, intending to wash the dirty dishes in the morning. Or perhaps, as conflicted and emotional as she was now, maybe she'd wash them as soon as he'd left.

"I had a great time, as always," she said bashfully, giving him a small smile. "It's my day off tomorrow, and I'll be watching Shang for Tigress and Dalang, but if you come by, I'll make those rolls you like so much…"

"You don't hafta do that," he said.

"I want to—you treated me to a wonderful dinner; makes sense I should return the favor, right?"

An unreadable expression crossed his face, but he managed to push it away before she could say something. He gave her a smile, albeit a strained, unhappy one. "Sure thing. I'll, uh…I got training with Shifu and Tai tomorrow, most of the day, but I'll be down to help Dad about mid-afternoon."

"That's great," she nodded. "Shang will be having his nap then. It'll be perfect."

"Yeah. Perfect."

The pandas stood there a tense moment longer before Po broke the silence and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. "Have a good night, Su Lin. Sleep well."

Su Lin felt her heart aching as he turned away and left without anything further to say, not even a good night kiss. The pain in her heart was so great; she knew she couldn't sleep at a time like this. Regardless, she went upstairs to change into her nightdress and dressing gown, then came back downstairs to wash the dishes. Sinking her paws into the hot water, and scrubbing against the hardened rice and other dried food stuck to bowls and chopsticks gave her little peace of mind as she ran over the night's events in her head.

Tonight was the night. Tonight _was_ the night! And she blew it. At the critical moment, the moment she needed to prove how much she loved him, and she had choked. She had completely ruined an otherwise perfect evening, and now she was sure she had made Po completely mad at her for leading him on and rejecting him like that, and had probably lost all respect he had for her. A good girl did not act the way she had; good girls did as their mothers told them, as was expected of them, and giving in to baser urges, no matter how strong, was _not_ the mark of a good girl. When she was still alive, Su Lin's mother was her daughter's closest ally, her best friend and confidante. And had the matron not told her that girls who knew men before marriage were no better than lower-class courtesans? Wasn't a virtuous and a pious girl supposed to be chaste until marriage? Wasn't a virtuous girl held to a higher standard than others? And wasn't a girl expected to honor and respect her mother by obeying her until she got married?

But…as much as Su Lin loved and missed her mother, her love for Po was just as strong—stronger—and the need for him to know just how much he meant to her… _That's not love,_ her mother would have said. _Those girls who chase after boys like that don't love them, and those boys certainly don't love or respect them! You show your love to your future husband by being chaste and docile, and never doing anything to make him ashamed of you. He will respect you and love you more if you __**don't**__ give it up before marriage._

She suddenly felt ill, her stomach churning at the implication. She had been willing to give herself to him, her heart, mind, soul, and body, that very night. She had behaved as an immoral wretch, a terrible sinner, and now there was no way Po could respect her now…or love her.

Two hot tears fell into the basin as she sucked in a breath. She let the bowl in her hand drop to the bottom of the pot of cooling water as she hid her face in her hands, only able to choke out a single frustrated, defeated sob:

"_Shit_."

* * *

As soon as Po had made it back to the Jade Palace, in lieu of sleep he made his way to the Sacred Hall of Warriors. It was here that he stood, gazing down into the Moon Pool with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, the panda sighing dejectedly. Tonight had been going so well, he thought. Okay, fine, he was nervous about it, as nervous as if it were their first date again. In fact, he had worn this very outfit because Su Lin had told him how handsome he looked in it.

Had he been expecting too much? Hell, this was a conversation they had a long time ago. Su Lin had said she wanted to wait until marriage, but lately she'd been acting like she was reconsidering. Tonight, for example, was the clearest signal that she was ready. At least he had thought so. And Po suddenly felt terrible, recalling how important her chastity was to her, that he had initiated and gone so far…too far. Why else would she have pushed him away like that?

He looked down at his reflection and frowned at what he saw. Oh yeah, that probably had something to do with it, he thought dejectedly, running his hand over his still large stomach. Three years of constant training under slave drivers like Shifu, Tigress, and now Tai Lung, should have done _something_ for the panda's physique, and yet the only improvements he saw were slight muscle definition in his arms. The belly was still there, and the flab…the fat…

No wonder she pushed him away.

He closed his eyes and groaned, hanging his head. He'd been such a jerk, forcing himself on her like that. He should have realized that wasn't what she wanted; had he been paying closer attention, he would have stopped before it became a problem. Now she was mad at him—she had to be. If he'd been in the same position, he'd be mad too.

Po sighed and looked up to the ceiling, where the golden dragon's jaws were conspicuously empty. The panda kept the Dragon Scroll among his personal effects, and considering the more philosophical "secret" the scroll contained, he felt it wasn't as much a danger as it had originally been thought. The secret was simply to believe in yourself, and be your own hero. And heroes didn't need to be able to fight. For example, Po's hero had and always would be his own father; the goose kept him grounded, even after the panda was given the title as the Dragon Warrior.

But how would Mr. Ping react to Po's actions that evening? _'I thought I'd taught you better!'_ he'd say. And he had, he _had_ taught him better. Po groaned and hung his head again, absolutely dismal.

"What are you doing?"

Po jumped, holding a hand over his heart. He hadn't even heard Wu Lien as she entered the Hall, the elderly red panda in her house coat and holding a small lantern in her hand. She gave him a curious look. "Didn't mean to startle you, dear, but it _is_ rather late for such deep introspection. Is something on your mind?"

Once Po had settled down, and gotten his thudding heart under control, he sighed and shook his head. "I don't know…"

"Didn't you have a date with Su Lin this…" then she realized, and looked worried, "Are you all right? You two are still together, aren't you?"

"Yeah, yeah, we are…as far as I know."

Wu frowned. "Su Lin is not the sort of girl to string a man along, or to let a fine gentleman like you slip out of her hands—you're a godsend to her, and whatever transgression you think you committed can't be held against you."

The pair stood silent, gazing into the Moon Pool. Wu cast her green-eyed stare up to the panda, studying him a moment. What she said next nearly gave him a heart attack. "Tried to make a move, did you?"

"What? No! I…" he stammered guiltily.

"Oh for heaven's sake, I won't beat you over it." She shook her head. "Su Lin is simply not ready for that. She wants to remain chaste until marriage."

"I know…I know. Gods, I'm such an idiot. I mean, I know how much it means to her, and yet I still…" he said.

Wu snorted, "Po, I see no reason why two people so in love—like you two—would deny themselves the ultimate expression of that love just because of some silly social rules."

"So…you don't think I'm the scum of the earth?"

"Of course not, that would be hypocritical of me. _I_ wasn't a virgin when I got married, and neither was Shifu. Not that it really mattered," she smirked suggestively, her persistent sly smile on her lips.

Po made a face. "You guys still _do_ that? Gross!"

"Ahem," she hemmed crossly.

"Sorry. I just uh, don't like thinking of Shifu doing…"

"For heaven's sake, Po, _everyone_ does it at some point in their lives."

"But what should I do about…about me and Su?" he asked. "I mean, I could ask Shifu, but…he doesn't seem to be an expert in how women think, y'know?"

"Of course I do; I'm married to him," she tittered.

He cracked a smile, allowing her to give her advice: "Su Lin has been through an awful lot in her young life. You have to understand that she was rather close to her family and loved them dearly. She was thirteen when they died, and to imagine that she went through such tumultuous years without that support…" Wu shook her head. "Her adolescence was a rough one. I think as a result of losing her family like that, she became more pious, to try and make sense of it all, to have some of that comfort."

"But _you_ gave her comfort, didn't you?" he asked. "I mean, you adopted her."

"I did, but sweetheart," she looked at him meaningfully. "I can _never_ take the place of her mother, Dalang and Mei Xing can never take the place of her brother and sister, and Shifu can never take her father's place. My best guess for her refusal to 'take the plunge' is trying to honor her family's memory."

Po looked back into the pool's still waters and sighed. "Now I really feel like a jerk. I should've known that…"

"No one holds that against you, dear-heart," she said, patting his hand. "I certainly don't. I have a feeling that had they lived, her family would be quite happy with you." She paused, then added, "Though I must say, as her acting mother, I have my own two _fen_ to add… I think you should really talk to her about this. The sooner, the better. Don't let this fester, Po. Talk to her, figure out if there was some sort of miscommunication, which I'm sure there was."

"She's gotta be mad at me. Shouldn't I wait?"

"When I have a fight with Shifu," she said, exhaling shortly. "And we've had many…sometimes I would let it wait until morning, but all that does is lead to a sleepless night. Sometimes, in the morning I am less mad than I was, other times I'm still livid. I'm telling you, right now—and Shifu would say the same—don't let this wait. This is one conversation that needs to happen."

Po sighed heavily, knowing that she was right. But his heart hurt too much to consider going back now, going down to the village to apologize, to talk, to get her side of the story…to face the music, as it were.

"It's late," he said. "She's probably already asleep."

Wu fought back the groan, and fought the greater urge to slap her hand to her forehead…or to slap _him_. Whatever had happened must have been traumatic for both. She, however, sighed and shook her head, "Fine. I suppose it could wait until morning. You'll have had time to think it over, which will help. Now come on, dear, off to bed with you! I'd better be getting back before my Shifu misses me."

Which made Po wonder… "Why did you come in here anyway?"

She shrugged. "Call it women's intuition. Trust me, I'm sure everything will be alright." She smiled hopefully. "She is very understanding."

Po hoped she was right. He really hoped she was right.

* * *

Shang woke her up bright and early, as always. Tigress rarely needed the gong anymore; her son's hungry wails were enough to keep her on schedule. Sighing, she opened her eyes and felt her husband's side of the bed. It was empty, already made, but still warm. He must have only just gone downstairs to begin preparations for the workday.

Shang cried louder and Tigress groaned. "Okay, sweetie, Mommy's coming…" she groggily stood and made up her side of the bed, wrapping a warm robe around her as she picked up her son and held him to her breast. She let him nurse, sighing tiredly and fighting the urge to fall back asleep. Taking care to burp him, she set him back in his crib, quickly dressed in warm robes, and took her son with her into the home's main room.

Mei Xing was already up, her sewing abandoned in favor of the restaurant's ledgers. After Wu Lien had retired from the restaurant business in order to teach again, Mei Xing had picked up the finances as part of her duties. And it was one of the few duties her doctor still allowed her to do during her pregnancy. The snow leopardess looked up and smiled,

"Morning, Sunshine."

"Ngn…" Tigress groaned.

"Dalang didn't let you sleep much last night, did he?"

"You heard us—you should know."

"Oh, I know," she smirked, subtracting expenses on the abacus in front of her. "We heard the banging of the headboard quite clearly…"

"Mei! Not in front of Shang…"

"C'mon, he's six months old, he's not going to remember. Hmm, we lost a little bit in the last quarter," she mumbled to herself. "About a two percent loss…not significant, but…"

"Where _is_ Tai Lung, by the way?" Tigress interrupted, setting Shang down on the rug, right in the middle of his favorite toys.

"He's getting ready; he should be down in the kitchen soon enough." The snow leopardess put down the abacus, closed the ledger and moved across the room to keep an eye on Shang. "Are you off to train again?"

"Might as well. I'm not going to get back to sleep…" she said, noting her rambunctious infant. "Are you going to be okay watching him today?"

Mei Xing nodded. "I should be. Su Lin won't be able to…"

"Why not?"

She looked up from dangling a stuffed animal in front of the baby. "She said she's sick. Or Mr. Ping did, anyway. She's still in bed."

Tigress looked worried; it wasn't like Su Lin to get sick. As long as Tigress had known her, the female panda had never had so much as a sniffle. She took very good care of herself.

"I kind of expected it though," Mei Xing added. "She had a date with Po last night, and it was pretty chilly…"

"Right." The tiger master had her own suspicions of that, but kept silent. "Well, if you've got everything under control, I'll go grab a quick bite and head up early. You need anything?"

"I'm good; you go train. Have a good session!"

Nodding in affirmation, Tigress knelt to kiss her son goodbye and slowly descended the stairs. She winced once or twice, feeling a familiar—yet slightly unwelcome—ache in her lower abdomen…not that she terribly minded, thank you. Still, it had been quite a long time since her last, and last night especially proved that Dalang was as deprived as she had felt. Still, the discomfort associated with a year of no marital relations had less to do with not being used to near-constant coitus, and more to do with the frenetic, passionate love making of the previous night.

Tigress poked her head around the corner and spied her husband already at work, stoking the coals in the stove, enticing them to ignite the logs and kindling he had put in there. A line of eager customers were already waiting for his signature breakfast dim sum, including one particularly obnoxious goat…

Tigress frowned; she knew that goat all too well. A cantankerous grouch, he complained about everything, and that meant absolutely _everything_. If the weather were warm and sunny, he would complain it was _too _warm and _too_ bright. If it were cool and crisp, it was too cold. He was also Dalang's worst customer. Now, Mr. Ping had known the goat for many, many years, so Po was used to him (though he confessed to Tigress, he was glad he was no longer working full-time in the restaurant, just because of that one individual). Tai Lung didn't tolerate the attitude, and made that _quite_ clear the first time the goat gave him a piece of his mind. _Idiot,_ she thought. _What kind of fool do you have to be to want to piss off Tai Lung?_

Dalang, however, took the abuse the only way he knew how: by killing the tetchy bastard with kindness.

"Mr. Lu, the restaurant isn't due to open for another fifteen minutes," he said with strained calm, but she could tell from the way his ears and whiskers twitched that he was becoming steadily more irritated. That much was evident by the slightly raised diction and articulation: "The oven needs time to fire up. I will start taking orders and preparing them. In the meantime, there is hot tea for everyone, so I suggest partaking in that while you wait patiently."

"Patiently!" the goat griped, "I hope you all are listening to this! You have some nerve telling me, an old man near the end of his days, to be patient!"

Dalang only smiled sweetly—disarmingly so—at the goat and said something in a language Tigress didn't know, the words inexplicably deepening his voice, a surprising enunciation she was not used to hearing from him, and a rumbling purr that both surprised her…and turned her on. _No, down girl._

"What did you say to me, boy?" the goat rankled.

The tiger went unfazed, still smiling, "It means 'Patience is a virtue blessed by the gods'. I also wished you good tidings and a pleasant day, _blyadskii_ _mudak_." The tone sounded so sweet, so friendly, that the goat immediately took that as an honorific, and nodded curtly.

"Well, that's better. Otherwise, it would seem your family didn't have the good graces to teach you some manners."

"I'm not the only one," he muttered. He suddenly noticed Tigress standing in the doorway, smiled, and got down to the business of rolling out the dough for the dumplings. "'Morning, sweetie; what're you in the mood for this morning?"

Tigress walked up to him to kiss his cheek. "Whatever you feel like making. Take your time, _I can wait_," she said, sending a pointed glare at the goat, who had the grace to back away and look repentant for his behavior. She added, "I'll enjoy a _nice cup of tea_ while I wait." The spoken suggestion was all the crowd control needed as the line dissipated and went to sit at the tables.

Dalang turned to her and mouthed, "Thank you." But before he could go back to his work, she interrupted him.

"What did you say to him?"

"What, to Lu? I just told him to wait."

"No, in that…language you used. What was it?"

"Huh?" he looked at her curiously. "Oh, wait…oh _yeah_, yeah, that…um…" he beckoned her closer and whispered, "Sorry, sometimes I forget I switch over to it. I told him that if he kept complaining, I'd help him get to the Other Side a lot faster."

"Dalang!" she scolded.

He shrugged, unfazed by her reprimand. "Not my fault he doesn't speak Russian."

Tigress stared at him a moment before she asked, "Since when do you speak Russian?"

He froze, one hand in a bowl of sweet breakfast dim sum filling, the other holding a small doughy circle. His stiffened shoulders told her he had revealed more than he was comfortable exposing. But it was too late to back out now.

"Dad, er, um, Shen, he had, uh…well, he had a few Siberians in his army. Couple of them taught me Russian—started with the swear words, like you're supposed to do when you learn any new language."

"I thought you were supposed to learn greetings first?"

"In a classroom setting, yeah, but I wasn't exactly attending a traditional school, you know?" he ironically smiled.

"Did Shang know any languages?"

He nodded, starting to prepare the breakfast. "He knew three, aside from Chinese. He spoke Russian, Mongolian, and a smattering of Korean. He was really smart, told me he'd teach me how to speak them, if I was interested."

"You didn't tell me you went to Korea," she said, leaning against the table.

"I was really young," he answered, frantically working so he could appease the crowd outside. "I hardly remember it. I know my mom liked the place well enough. They're nice people, Koreans. She got some nice silks from them. I still have a couple yards of it upstairs."

"Really? How come I've never seen them?"

"You have—they were one of my wedding gifts to you."

Tigress thought about it a moment, then remembered…he had given her a yard each of a soft yellow, pink, bright red, jade green, and a dark blue silk, all embroidered with golden yellow thread. She had been repulsed by the pastels, due to her untraditional upbringing as a tomboy, but said nothing about it at the time, not knowing, but suspecting, how important the gift was.

"I'm surprised you managed to hold onto them," she said softly, wondering how he had kept them even after running from almost certain death at Shen's hand.

"Wasn't easy," he affirmed, but didn't elaborate. "The lighter-colored silks are left over from some of Mom's favorite dresses; the blue was left over from a jacket she made me when I was…five, I think? After she died, all seven of us saved something of hers. I kept the silks, because they reminded me of her. She liked to sew. She embroidered those silks herself. I remember sitting at her side, learning reading and arithmetic while she did her embroidery." He stopped, staring off into space, but she noticed a small, sad smile, fondly remembering, but full of regret.

And now she regretted her initial aversion to the gift. Something so priceless to him had to have been difficult for him to give up. But if he'd held such an iron grip to that one connection he had to his mother for so long, it was proof how much he loved and missed her…and in giving those same silks to Tigress, a testament to how much he loved _her_.

"I wish you'd told me sooner," she said. "I know it's not easy to talk about it, about your family, I mean. I just wish you'd be more open about it; there's still so much I don't know about you."

He sighed, shoulders visibly heaving. "I don't mind telling you about Mom and Shang…they were the only light I had. I didn't have much love for my other brothers." He paused to think. "I…I guess the Twins _weren't_ so bad, actually—Chang was a bigger prankster than I was, and loved to piss off Shen any chance he got. He annoyed me and picked on me a lot. Ang was more cautious, less impulsive, more serious too, though he did have a mischievous side. He didn't nearly pick on me as much. I admit, though, that some of the pranks I use on Tai, Mantis and Monkey were inspired by them."

"Like what, for example?"

Dalang smirked. "Remember the time Monkey made fun of my failure at baking?"

She grinned, "You mean when you hid his favorite nunchucks in a cake, and served it to him?"

"That's the one," he impishly grinned. "That was a Chang classic. Then there was the time he convinced Xiang—when he was high, of course—that a women's _qipao_ was actually more flattering on him than a _hanfu pao_…and convinced him to invest in purses because 'a lot of men are carrying them now, it makes them manlier'. Shen had a _fit _when he saw Xiang all dressed up in full drag." He chuckled.

"Any others?" she asked, sitting on a nearby chair. This was the most open he had ever been about any of his brothers, except his eldest. The fact that Chang and Ang were so close to him in age probably had something to do with the fondness he now exhibited to them.

"Loads! There was the time they convinced Huang to form an 'alliance' with them to keep him from fighting on the front lines, and that our other brothers were conspiring against him…Chang managed to get everyone in on the prank, even a few of the Siberians in the ranks. Huang was so humiliated he wouldn't show his face for weeks. Of course, losing an eye _because_ of that prank probably had something to do with it…"

"Let me guess: Shen was furious?"

"He almost had a coronary that time," he cheekily grinned. "And the time we went to Anshan—you know the place, its famous for its hot springs—Ang actually convinced Feng it would be a good idea to get close to the geysers because they 'had healing properties'…"

She laughed—having fought Feng, she could easily see the archer falling for something like that; though she had never been to Anshan, she knew better than to go anywhere near the scalding hot geysers. "Did Feng do it?"

He scoffed. "Of course he did it; he was a frickin' idiot. He was the dupe most often in their pranks because he fell for it _every time_. And Shen…"

"…was furious," she finished with a grin. "I'm beginning to see a pattern."

"Well, Shen _did_ have it coming; he called them 'weaklings' and…well, a couple times he called them 'pansies', because they practiced knitting and embroidery. They picked it up after Mom died—before I was cast out of the clan, they told me they did it because of battle stress. They were the mellowest of us all; I think the crafts had something to do with it."

She furrowed her brows in confusion. "But…a lot of men sew and knit and…things like that. They have guilds for that sort of thing…"

"Yeah, but Shen had some pretty rigid ideas of manhood," Dalang confessed with a dour look. "I think he even questioned their, uh, orientation a couple times…that was all the fuel Chang needed to get back at him. Ang feared his wrath too much to admit to anything."

"Were they…um, you know…" she faltered, not sure if she was being too nosy.

He shrugged. "As far as I know, they weren't. They were good at what they did though, extremely good. Chang and Ang were skilled with chain weapons and spears, cross-trained, and they'd come back from savagely killing a score of men, sit down, and pick up their crafts, like nothing had happened. Ang was pretty good at embroidery—he sewed good luck and longevity symbols into our clothes, to protect us from harm. Chang made socks, lots of them. He was quick—he could knock out a pair in two days. I still have a pair he made me, a gag gift, for my seventeenth birthday. You remember those socks you wanted to throw out because they were so worn out?"

Oh yes, she knew. They were so holey, they deserved to be sanctified. And they were ugly too, with garish rainbow bright colors forming an intricate striped pattern. She could easily see them as a prank gift (or a function of her husband's oft-times poor taste in clothes), and now that she knew the history of the knitter in question…she could see why Dalang was so reluctant to get rid of them.

"Were you close?"

"Not as close as I was to Shang," he said as he placed the dim sum in the steamer. "But yeah, I suppose you could say that." He paused for a moment as he began to prepare more of the breakfast dumplings. "He tried making a sweater once, Chang did. Made it out of the most putrid green string he could find," he chuckled. "It was an incredible failure. He ended up unraveling it and made all seven of us more socks. I think Huang and Xiang threw theirs away first chance they got; I mean, that color was _ugly_ as _sin_. Shang and I held onto them, because we wore through socks pretty quickly." After another pause, he replied, haltingly, "I was wearing those rainbow socks the night I left the clan. I couldn't keep anything Ang made—Shang needed it as proof he'd 'killed' me."

"Why would you keep something to remind you of…I mean, you don't like talking about the past," she gently started. "But if living with the Jiao hurt you so much, why hold on to those mementos?"

"…I don't know how to answer that." he sighed and shook his head. "I honestly couldn't tell you."

"Can't, or won't?"

He turned to stare back at her. "Excuse me?"

"Don't you 'excuse me' _me_," she said, giving him a no-nonsense look. "I might have a perfectly good excuse not telling anything about my life, because I don't remember a lot of my early years, but whatever trauma happened to you, I need to know."

"No you don't," was his clipped answer as he turned away.

"Don't you turn your back on me, Jiao Dalang," she growled low, not wanting to arouse attention to their disagreement.

"I'm _not_ turning my back," he snapped. "I'm just not telling you for your own good."

"My own good?" she demanded, standing abruptly. "You have some nerve! I do _not_ appreciate you lying to me!"

"I'm not lying—"

"Withholding the truth is the same thing as a lie, Dalang," she huffed. "I thought you learned your lesson two years ago when you 'neglected' to tell me your heritage! You told me then you were trying to protect me, and it bit you in the ass; don't you dare tell me you're protecting me now."

Before Dalang's astonished eyes, his wife marched straight for the back door, grabbing her cloak on the coat rack. "I'm going to train."

"Don't you want breakfast…?"

"I lost my appetite," she said coldly, then slammed the door behind her.

Dalang stared at the door in mute shock, his mind whirling. Had that really just happened? Over his shoulder, someone cleared their throat.

"She's got a point, y'know," Tai Lung said quietly, coming down the stairs. "Lying to her did bite back pretty hard."

Dalang groaned and leaned heavily against the counter, begging the question, "What do you want from me? That chapter in my life is done—I just want to bury it and let it _stay_ buried. Is that too much to ask?"

Tai Lung walked over to the other stovetop to begin boiling water for another order. "But it won't stay buried—too many people remember what Shen did."

"Don't remind me," the tiger said dejectedly. "Dead two years and he's still messing up my life…"

* * *

Shifu heard Tigress long before he saw her. In fact, in a rare occasion, her battle cries from the training hall had actually awoken him. The red panda quietly got out of bed so he wouldn't wake his wife, then dressed quickly and made his way to the training hall on that chilly autumn morning. Passing through the gate, he saw the hall's doors thrown wide open, and Tigress doing a full run-through of the obstacle course. She wasn't doing her usual carnage on the Seven Swinging Clubs of Instant Oblivion; instead, she had commandeered Mantis' place in the Gauntlet of Wooden Warriors.

Shifu sighed—she must have had a fight with someone. Impressive, considering how early it was. The old master made his way inside, burying his hands inside his sleeves as he watched her pulverize the wooden warriors. A second later, he sidestepped to avoid a wooden head that she had knocked off. Clearing his throat, he saw Tigress freeze, then turn to stare at him.

"Rough morning?" he asked.

"You could say that, Master."

He sighed. "Was it Tai Lung again?"

"That's none of your business."

He looked at her in surprise; he knew what that was code for. "You and Dalang had a fight? What's wrong?" he asked worriedly.

"With all due respect, Master," she said as she hoisted herself up onto the landing, "My marriage is really _none_ of your business."

"It _is_ my business when my daughter is unhappy," he shot back. "Now tell me what's wrong."

Tigress sighed, arms akimbo as she hung her head, visibly thinking of how to word it. Shifu beat her to the punch:

"He's still distant about his past, and that's bothering you."

"Wouldn't it bother _you_?" she asked. "I don't care about the things he did with that clan—he's not the same person he was as a teenager; _I'm_ not the same person I was as a teenager."

_Thank the gods for that,_ he thought, but he said aloud, "He's not the only one who withholds that kind of information."

"But you and Wu Lien are at least open with each other, and honest…aren't you?" she asked after his pause.

"Tigress, the thing I've learned about marriage is that you are always going to keep secrets from your spouse," he said with a sigh. "As much as you love Dalang, there are certain things I _know_ you don't want him to know about. There are many things I'm not comfortable telling Lotus about," he confessed, "And many more things she's not comfortable telling _me_. I've come to accept it, as she has. Perhaps it's not the ideal, but the point is…"

He smiled, softly, thinking of his wife of one year; Tigress saw the fondness there, and the undeniable love he had for her. "The point," he continued, "is that you love them. Now, you need to understand that I don't care if I ever know Lotus' full story."

"Why not?" she asked curiously.

Shifu smiled again, "Because I didn't fall in love that the woman that she _was_; I fell in love with the woman that she _is_. You're right in that people do change, and sometimes the person they were as little as five years ago is nothing but a distant memory, a completely different person. You didn't fall in love with the Jiao Dalang who was a member of the Jiao Clan…you fell in love with the Jiao Dalang who is a chef, and a damn good one at that; you fell in love with the gentle soul that we all know now, with the happy prankster…with admittedly the funniest pranks I've ever seen," he smirked, clearly remembering the Nunchuck Cake incident. "Do you see what I'm saying?"

"I do," she nodded. "But isn't it important to know where you come from, where your loved ones come from?"

He paused, "It is important, but not vital. As long as he is not keeping something life-threatening from you, I see no reason to worry."

"But shouldn't husbands and wives tell each other everything?" she asked. "I love my husband, but if I can be perfectly open with him, why can't he be the same with me?"

"What are his reasons for keeping things from you?"

"To protect me," she said crossly. "Not to brag, but I am _Master_ Tigress of the _Furious Five_! I don't need _anyone_ to protect me!"

"But he doesn't see that. To him, you are not Master Tigress. To him, you are simply Tigress, the woman he loves above all else. You are the light of his life, the woman he loves so much that he would die for."

What he said had an odd effect on her mood. Tigress stared down at the floor, deep in thought, then said, "Maybe…I changed too much. I know you thought I changed to fit his ideal woman, and I respect your opinion…"

"I don't think that anymore," he confessed. "Like Tai Lung, I made you too hard, too rigid, and mistakenly taught you that your emotions would be your greatest enemy. All that matters to me is whether or not you're happy. Dalang makes you happy, your son—I see it—makes you happier than I've ever seen you."

"No," she shook her head, sighing and sitting on the edge of the walkway. "No, I did change…I used to be so independent, and when I fell in love, I became so dependent on other people; I became a completely different person."

"Tigress," he said sternly. "Everyone changes after marriage, after falling in love. For good or ill. In your case, for good."

"But you didn't change…at least, not that I can see…"

He smirked. "Well, you aren't up at the Jade Palace as much anymore. Believe me, I've changed. Crane and Viper, certainly, have changed."

Tigress smirked, "I'll say—I thought he'd never tell his mother where to go."

The red panda grumbled, "You're telling me; I lost ten _yuan_ to Monkey on that one." After a pause, he cleared his throat. "If you need to go home…"

"I don't think that's a good idea," she sighed. "I think I might have overreacted; he'll be mad at me."

"It's possible. You're both very passionate people, it wouldn't surprise me if your tempers flared every so often. If you insist on staying, Viper and Crane should be up soon, if you feel like cross training…"

"Honestly?" she asked, a smirk slowly growing on her lips. "I think Mantis owes me."

Shifu tried very hard not to laugh; he knew what was coming. "Very well, carry on."

As Tigress was leaving to greet her friends, Wu Lien was walking in. The female red panda exchanged quick greetings with the tiger before turning to her husband. "She's here awfully early…"

He sighed.

"Dalang again?" she asked. "He'll come around. The fact he reveals anything at all to her is an improvement."

"She said she changed too much," he said, watching after his adoptive daughter worriedly. "The thing is, Lotus, I don't know if she's right or not."

"I haven't known her as long as you have, dearest," Wu said, cuddling up to her husband, "but if I had to hazard a guess: she's restless."

"Isn't _that_ the truth," he admitted. "Sometimes I wonder which cub had more energy: Tigress or Tai Lung."

"Tough call." After another pause, she cleared her throat and took his arm in hers. "Come on, Shifu, lets at least have some tea before having such deep conversations so early…I get the feeling the rest of the day will be rather trying."

"How do you wager that?"

Wu sighed, remembering her talk with Po the previous night. "Women's intuition, love, women's intuition…"

* * *

"Not cool."

"Sorry you feel that way."

"Seriously, it is _not_ cool."

"My apologies, Master Mantis," Sonam growled, "but my son and daughter-in-law are rather important to me."

"But why do you have to move down _there_?" Monkey asked. "When we are all up here? We're thick as thieves, us three!"

"Yeah, with _you_ gone, where does that leave us?"

"You lads were perfectly fine before I came along," the old snow leopard reminded, reaching for another rice ball. "Besides, its not like I'm going halfway across the empire, I'm just down the slope. Now start eating; I don't want to argue at breakfast. Bad form, that."

"But you live up _here_," Monkey pointed out. "I thought you said you couldn't stand living in the village."

"Yeah man, you're more antisocial than Tai Lung. Not that that's a bad thing," the insect covered quickly.

Sonam closed his eye and forcefully exhaled. "Lads, we all knew I'd move down there to help Mei Xing before she gave birth…"

"The kid's not gonna drop for another two months! And Mei Xing's tougher than you think; she punched Tai Lung so hard one time she chipped his tooth, remember?" Mantis said. "C'mon, you can stay! You said so yourself, she's not that far, and she's not really going anywhere…"

"I made a promise to my son, and I'm keeping it. End of story." After reaching for another rice ball, chewing, and swallowing, he fixed them both with a look. "…Just out of curiosity, why are you lads so resolute about my staying?"

"Good morning, everyone!" Viper said cheerily as she and Crane came into the kitchen. "I hope everyone slept well, I know _we _did…" she gushed while her husband blushed.

The looks Mantis and Monkey sent him told Sonam all he needed to know. "Oh. Right."

"Where's Po this morning?" Crane asked, setting his hat aside. "He's usually up by now."

"Beats me," Monkey said. "Me and Mantis had to cook…"

Sonam coughed and choked down the last morsel, taking on a sudden greenish pallor. Even while the insect and simian glared at his reaction, both Viper and Crane blanched.

"Um…" Viper said. "How about we go down to the Long and Feng for breakfast? Dalang's got a cinnamon apple dim sum special this week."

All the males cast a look at the rest of the breakfast fare…and Sonam wondered just how out of it he must have been not to recognize the monstrosity Mantis and Monkey called "cooking". The two were die-hard bachelors…and thus terrible cooks. And now that they got a second look at what they had concocted, even the would-be chefs were also having second thoughts.

"Okay, I'm buying," Mantis said.

* * *

The roar from Tigress was what finally woke Po. If she was here and already training, that meant he had slept in—and knowing Shifu's policy on that, he was in trouble. The panda snapped up and gasped, "I'm late!" Scrambling to pick up his clothes and throwing them on haphazardly, he ran for the training hall before he faced Shifu's wrath. Tying the belt of his training robe as tight as it could go around his stomach—and again making him regret being born a giant panda—he flew into the training facility, and was nearly bowled over when a long scaly thing wrapped itself tightly around his neck.

He fell flat on his back, and almost immediately, Viper began apologizing.

"Po! I'm so sorry, brother, are you all right? I didn't see you there!"

"Should I take that as a compliment?" the panda asked. Over the war cries coming from Tigress in the training hall, he heard a familiar sigh, and felt Crane's talons taking hold of his arm to help him up.

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself," the avian master said. "I can tell you had a rough night."

"I know! Po, you look so pale…maybe you should take the day off from training," the serpent said, worry etched on her lovely face.

Po shook his head and slowly stood. "Nah, nah, I'll be okay. Just got a lot on my mind…"

"You're distracted," Crane started, "And you want to train on _Shifu's_ regimen?"

Po stopped, then thought about the wisdom of taking on the red panda's course of therapy. "…Maybe I should meditate."

"I'd do that."

The panda paused, looking at the newlyweds, then decided to broach the subject, "You mind if I ask you guys somethin'?"

"Sure!" Viper smiled. "What can we help you with?"

"Well, uh, I guess this is something Crane knows better about…no offense…"

"None…taken?" Crane shared a look with his wife and shrugged. "What's up?"

"Well, uh," the panda cast a quick, uncertain look towards Viper, and suddenly wished he hadn't bothered. "Nah, forget it, its stupid."

"No, its okay," Viper said. "Something's bothering you, and you know we want to help."

Po looked back at Crane and asked, "Well, um, I…I remember you telling me once that, you…y'know when you were still a janitor, that you uh, had uh…image issues?"

Crane and Viper shared a look before Viper smiled. "Oh, is that what this is about? Oh Po, how could you think there's something wrong with your image? We think you look fine!"

"That's not what you said when you first met me," he glowered.

The couple thought hard about that. Crane cleared his throat and said, "Well, in our defense, we were kind of bitter at the time. We didn't behave the way kung fu masters are supposed to, and we are very sorry for that…"

"Besides, you proved us all wrong," Viper said. "I think it's safe to say that we're all older and wiser now. I mean, Tai Lung wasn't the only one who thought a Dragon Warrior should be…well, should be a predator."

"Hindsight's the clearest sight of all, right?" Crane offered. "It makes sense though. Dragons are harbingers of peace and prosperity, the ones who bring rain and floods, and are the protectors and givers of life. It makes sense that the title should go to a panda, a symbol of peace. And makes sense that it should go to a creature that doesn't have a form of kung fu named after them."

"Though if you ask me," Viper smirked. "After winning the battle against Tai Lung, there _should_ have been a 'Bear style'."

Po's lips curled slightly into the ghost of a smile. "Yeah, but…wait." A look passed over his face, and then he brightened. "Wait…you're right. That's it!"

"So, did we solve your problem?"

"Yeah, yeah, and if I got more questions, I know just who to ask. You guys are the greatest!" he grinned. "Hey, did you already eat? I can make you something…"

Viper suddenly looked greener than usual. Crane coughed into his wing and answered haltingly, "Um, actually, we lost our appetites."

"Um…why?"

"Because when you didn't get up on time, Mantis and Monkey decided to cook."

Po recoiled in horror. "And you _let_ them?!"

"They made a good show of it," Viper said, though half-heartedly. "Sonam even took a few bites of it without complaining…"

"…Because he thought _Po_ had cooked," Crane pointed out. "They went down to the village for Dalang's breakfast specials. After they left, we took the leftovers out to the refuse pile and burned it. Turned the flames some pretty interesting colors…"

"Please don't tell me they gave everyone food poisoning," Po groaned. "I remember what happened the last time I was sick and you guys had to fend for yourselves…"

"You ended up locking the door to the kitchen and sent us down to the restaurant," Viper nodded. "We did the same today. At least if Sonam does get sick, Su Lin is there to treat him."

An unreadable expression crossed Po's face, alerting the married couple that perhaps something was quite amiss. "Okay," Po said. "That's cool. I mean, that's good."

"You know, Po…" Crane stepped forward, "If you're not feeling well, you should go back to bed…"

"No, I gotta keep training. 'Sides, if I don't, Shifu'd kill me…"

"Oh he's down at the restaurant with everyone else."

"He is, huh? Maybe I _should_ go back to bed…"

"Or just take it easy today," Crane said, patting his shoulder. "Tai Lung's been working you pretty hard lately."

"Yeah, he has… Which reminds me, when is he supposed to come up today?"

"After lunch. He's taking the morning shift with Dalang, then he'll be up." Crane let down his wing, allowing Viper to slither up it and drape herself around his shoulders. "Anyway, we should probably go clean up the kitchen…"

"…and destroy whatever evidence is left…" Viper added.

"…So you meditate, or something," Crane said helpfully. "We'll be back in an hour or so."

Po arched an eyebrow. "You think it would take an hour to clean the kitchen?"

The dead silence that followed was all the indication the panda needed.

"There should be some lye you can use for disinfectant," he offered.

"We plan on it," Crane nodded. "Have a good practice."

"Thanks," Po said, sitting in a corner and taking up a meditation position as best he could for his still-limited flexibility. _I have a feeling I'll need it_, he silently added.

* * *

The rhino bartender looked up when the heavy paw slammed on top of his bar. Though much bigger than the patron, the rhino blanched and froze. His guest from Room Three pulled out a bag and casually dropped it on the counter.

"Is payment," the assassin grinned.

Behind him, the entire room went as quiet and cold as a crypt, the chill in the air as if ghosts had come to creep in through the cracks in the walls, permeating the room in a tomblike cold that had even the Siberians shivering. The leopard assassin's hood was up, the only evidence of his species being the spotted tail and paws, the broad maw, and the dangerously sharp teeth that grinned at the proprietor.

The rhino swallowed hard, knowing better than to reach forward to take the pouch while the leopard stood there. The leopard took out his pipe and a small bag of tobacco, and began stuffing the glazed wooden bowl. "Haff light?"

"Huh?"

The leopard indicated the candles burning in the wall sconces. "Light."

"Oh, oh yeah, yeah, one sec…"

The leopard chuckled, leaning forward on the counter. His low, rough voice dropped to a whisper, the grin on his tone, "You are afraid, _da_?"

"Dunno what you're talkin' about, pal," the rhino said.

"You know. You know vhat I talk about," the leopard said, lightly tapping his claw on the bar. "You know me."

"Dunno what you're talkin' about," the rhino repeated, reaching for a spare taper to light for the cat's use. "I never seen you before in my life, and I ain't never heard of ya, neither."

He felt the leopard's sharp blue-green eyes on his back, making the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

"Do not like liars," the leopard growled.

The rhino stiffened then boldly snapped back, "What would you rather have, bud—some guy who knows who you are and pretends not to, or some guy who knows who you are and tells everyone?"

The leopard glared at him from beneath the hood…then his teeth gleamed as he smiled again. "You, I like. Much smart."

The rhino inwardly sighed with relief and offered the lit stick to the leopard, who lit the tobacco leaves and puffed out a few clouds of smoke. The smoke curled around his whiskers, and the rhino could swear those clouds formed the shapes of demons. Fitting, considering this creature was named for the greatest demon of all.

The door to the inn slammed open and a stout, burly boar stomped in, tracking in mud and dirty snow. The rhino curled his lip. He was no neat freak, but even he liked clean floors in his establishment. The boar completely ignored the hooded figure and slammed his fist on the bar.

"Hey, barkeep! Who's a guy gotta kill to get a drink?"

The rhino jumped when the leopard snarled, his genial manner suddenly evaporating into a savage growl. "Vas here first, _pig_," the leopard glared from under his hood. His entire body had stiffened, and the rhino drew back, knowing what that body language meant in the realm of predators.

The boar, however, was not so wise to the ways of marauders like the one he was currently standing next to. "That's what I hate about your people, no manners."

"Haff I no manners? Vhat is in own reflection, pig?"

The boar snorted at him. "I don't like your tone, and I don't think you know who you're talking to, old man!"

The boar didn't realize he'd made a very severe gaffe until the oppressing silence fell across the room. His beady little eyes glanced over at the other patrons, who were watching him with looks full of pity, looks only reserved for a condemned criminal whose noose was quickly tightening around his neck.

"Of course," the leopard growled, low and dangerous, "vhere are my manners?"

Abruptly, the leopard grabbed the boar's forearm and, taking the elbow in one paw and the wrist in the other, slammed the arm against the edge of the bar. The boar shrieked with agony as the bone pierced through the skin, blood pouring down his arm and clothes. But the leopard was not done. He grabbed the same arm and twisted it so sharply that the shoulder popped out of its socket with a loud _snap_, then he smashed the boar's face into the bar until the animal's skull was little more than a bloodied pulp.

The rhino had turned away from the leopard, not wanting to watch as the northern cat brutally punished the poor bandit. Instead, he distractedly counted the money in the bag the leopard had left, then waited until the cloaked cat dropped the boar to the ground with a heavy thud. The bartender handed the leopard a rag to wash the blood off his paws, which the cat silently accepted.

"You need change?" the bartender asked, feeling sick with the smell of blood in the air.

"_Nyet_," the leopard answered, throwing the bloodied rag back. And suddenly, he was back to his charming self, giving the rhino another smile that should have been charming, but came out as cruelly perverse. "Keep all change. Vas much good service. One last question, before I take leave: how far Chorh-Gom from here?"

The rhino pointed out the door, his hand shaking. "About five miles west, as the crow flies. It'll be tough going…should I get you some provisions for the trip?"

The leopard pressed his palms together as if in prayer, and smiled as kindly as a monk to a pious pilgrim, despite the fact that his bloodied victim was still writhing on the floor. "You, sir, you are much good man, much good man for such kindness. _Nyet_, I have food aplenty to last. This…this is good place. I vill come back, yes. _Da_, is good place…much good place."

Uncontrollably, the rhino began to shake. He didn't mind such a compliment from merchants on the Silk Road—in fact, he freely welcomed it. Word of mouth was good for business. But to have someone like this leopard say he liked the place…it made the rhino want to cut his losses, close up shop, and run. Far, far away. "C-Chorh-Gom is in ruins, you know. There won't be anyone there."

"I know, _malchik_," the leopard said. "I know the gossip about this Tai _Luung_," he said, pronouncing a long "u" in the snow leopard's name. "I vant see if gossip is true."

"Oh it's true," the rhino said, nodding fearfully. He'd been one of the advance guard that had escorted the snow leopard there. He had felt the glares on his back, heard the vicious snarls and primordial purrs from their incarcerated victim…and he relived those memories, hearing those snarls and vicious threats in his nightmares. There was no doubt in that rhino's mind that Tai Lung would get out. It was just like an invasion by the Huns—it was never a matter of _if_. "I wasn't there when it happened, but I used to be. That prison was inescapable."

The leopard laughed loud and long. The rhino swallowed hard again as the leopard smiled at him.

"Problem vit callink place 'inescapable'," the leopard chuckled, "is that can be escaped, if try hard enough. You say foolproof, they make better fool. No-think is certain…except chaos."

The leopard turned and gave the crowd a mock salute with his pipe. As he turned for the door, his foot collided with the boar, who was still coughing up blood on the floor. The leopard looked surprised, as if he had completely forgotten about the swine. The assassin fixed his pipe between his teeth, looked back up at the rhino and pointed at the boar.

"Friend, you vant get doctor for this one?" he asked, his voice tinged with concern. "He not look so good."

When the rhino's face paled further, the leopard threw his head back and laughed, and continued to laugh, the merriment chilling the rhino to the core, tingeing his very soul will ice-cold darkness, until the leopard slammed the door behind him. The patrons didn't bother to relax now that the leopard had left, for the howling winds outside that battered the windows and slammed against the walls carried with them the unmistakable laugh of a madman, of one truly possessed by a darkness known only in the worst kinds of nightmares.

* * *

A/N: Is it any surprise that I can totally see this guy with Vincent Price's voice? Just sayin'…

A couple shout-outs here. First: "There's a reason they're called _giant_ pandas" is a shout out to Hollyberry's wonderful fic "Warriors of the Heart", of which I am a great fan. Secondly: "You two still do that? Gross!" is a shout out to corset-rebellion-follower's story, "My Own Destiny"; I am a fan of all of her work. Lastly, and should come as no surprise, this last scene is my homage to Nievelion's breathtakingly _amazing_ story "A Different Lesson". Nieve, I shall never be the Master of Horror that you are, but I hope I came pretty close. Please read and review!


	4. Chapter 4: The Quest Begins

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, it belongs to Dreamworks Animation Studios. Period. The Original Characters are all mine, so please do not use without my prior consent.

It's a good thing I'm not doing these updates on a weekly basis. The past few weeks have been NUTS. I won't bore you with details; needless to say, my time for writing has been pretty limited.

Something I forgot to mention in the last chapter, the "honorific" Dalang called the goat Mr. Lu is actually anything but. Loosely translated into English from modern vernacular Russian, _blyadski mudak_ means "F-ing A-hole"; as I understand it, it's a favored term amongst Moscow taxi drivers…but for safety's sake, never say it in front of a person who actually speaks the language. It can only end in tears.

But enough of that, hope you enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 4: The Quest Begins

* * *

"It isn't _that_ hard, Po."

"Says you! I don't care how many times we do this, Tai, its still going to hurt!"

"You're not stretched out enough. If you'd let me help you, you wouldn't end up being so sore every time."

"Lets face it, I'm not as used to this as you are!"

"Quit your complaining and let me help you!"

"No way, you're not helping…ow! Why'd you pull on that?"

"It's supposed to help! Look, you're not going to get this until we condition you for it…"

"Ow, ow, OW!"

"Po, quit squirming! You're just making it worse—there, you see? You just strained yourself, and now you'll be sore for the next few days."

"I'd be sore _without_ your help!"

Tai Lung sighed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Po eventually toppled over onto his side with a light thump, kicking up a cloud of dust. Rubbing his tired eyes, the snow leopard bemoaned, "Po, sitting in full Lotus position for meditation is the best form for it, how many times do we have to go over this?"

"I'm a giant panda, alright? My body's not made for flexibility!" the panda grunted, pushing himself up to a sitting position next to the snow leopard. Tai Lung had his legs crossed in the full Lotus, his hands cupped in his lap…and trying to quell his rising temper.

"Could've fooled me," he muttered.

"Whazzat?"

"Nothing."

Po crossed his legs, then tried to lift one ankle to place it over his opposite knee, yet failed miserably when he tried to repeat with the other ankle, thus falling over again. Tai Lung sighed wearily, rolling his eyes.

"Fine, half Lotus will have to do."

"Thanks," the panda said glumly.

"All right, panda?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"I said, is everything all right? You're not usually so irritable…"

"You mean like you?"

"I resent that comment."

"So? I resent you calling me fat!"

Tai Lung was perplexed. "When did I call you that?" Then he thought about it. "Except for the battle over the scroll, and the few times we fought before defeating the Jiao…but every other time it was meant in jest and you know it!"

"You just said I wasn't flexible."

"That's not the same as…" the snow leopard stopped himself, then looked at Po curiously. Something occurred to him, and he wondered why he hadn't seen it in his friend before now. "Po, you and Su Lin…is everything all right?"

"We're still together," the panda snapped. When he caught Tai Lung's quizzical—yet worried—expression, he sighed and held his chin in his hands. "We're…okay. Just okay. Maybe now's not a good time to meditate; I just can't focus right now…"

"Don't change the subject," the snow leopard said, effortlessly extracting himself from the Lotus Position to sit cross-legged next to his companion. "Po, if I can come to you to moan about my marital woes, you can talk to me about your girlfriend. Now what's wrong?" When Po didn't answer right away, Tai Lung sighed. "_Please_, panda."

Po sighed and steeled himself up to answer. When he'd told Crane and Viper he knew just who to ask for advice about his image…Tai Lung had been the first to pop into his mind. And why not? He was the closest friend the panda had; they could tell each other anything. In theory, anyway. The panda glumly replied, "She deserves better."

Tai Lung felt like slamming his head into the nearest rock—the panda's, not his own. "Are you _mad_? You're the Dragon Warrior! There are _thousands_ of women in China who'd line up around the block for a chance to be with you!"

"And twice as many to have a chance with _you_," the panda said sullenly. "I can hear it in the village, all the girls saying how much they'd want a night with you."

"That's…" he hesitated.

"Encouraging?" Po asked with an accusatory tone. "Good for your ego?"

"I was going to say 'uncomfortable'. Don't these women remember the pain I caused this place over twenty years ago?"

"Every woman likes a bad boy. But I mean, c'mon, lets be honest, you're good-looking, strong, in great shape for a guy your age—not that there's anything wrong with being forty-one."

"Thank you so much for reminding me."

"_And_ you can cook!"

He waved this off. "A secondary skill, you recall. I learned from you and Dalang. But I still don't see what's—"

Po was blunt: "Duh, you're a sex symbol. I'm not."

Tai Lung felt a bit of a chill at that thought. A couple years ago, he would have been perfectly content with having such a title. Well, in all fairness, he was rather flattered that so many women still thought him attractive; Mei Xing, naturally, couldn't stop bragging to her closest friends about the wild nights they'd had together. Even Tigress listened insatiably to such scintillating stories…and he wasn't sure if that bothered him or not.

But now he was caught in a position no male friend ever wanted to be caught in with his other male friend (his "Bro", as Dalang would call it). True, he and Po were such close friends they _were_ like brothers; and didn't Mr. Ping call him, Po, and Dalang 'His Boys'? So, hypothetically, he could handle this awkward conversation.

The problem with hypotheses, however, was that oftentimes they were disproved.

"Sure, maybe you're not a 'sex symbol'," he started by pantomiming quotations with his fingers. "But you are…erm…the boy next door? Yes! Boy next door, the bloke every girl secretly wants because he's so approachable."

"Nice guys finish last, Tai."

Damn, how to get around that logic? It was true; the jerks always seemed to have a girl on their arm, whereas perfectly reasonable gentlemen, in every sense of the word, were often sitting along the walls with the other wallflowers, drinking away their woes. But he wasn't about to let his closest friend be one of those self-pitying buggers, nor would he allow him to go down the other path.

"Have you talked to her?"

"I don't need to, Tai. I…" he sighed raggedly. "Last night, you know, when me and Su went on that picnic date by the lake? I…I kinda made a move, y'know, see how far I could get."

Tai Lung set his jaw as the beast inside him raged. Okay, fine, he was married. Yes, he was expecting his first child. But, if one recalled the old saying about never forgetting their first love…well, perhaps that green-eyed monster wasn't as tame as the snow leopard would have liked. "…And?"

"She acted like it didn't mean anything."

"She brushed you off?"

"Totally. Like, shot down, burned, completely frickin' incinerated."

Tai Lung winced. "Sorry, mate."

"What am I doing wrong?!" Po asked desperately. "I mean, we've been together, what, over a year now? We can't seem to get past hugging and kissing…I mean, I want to take it a step farther, but I don't know how she'd feel about it. She seems so…"

"Innocent?"

Po sighed miserably. "Exactly. She's…cute."

Cute. _Cute_! The most _horrid_ word with the most _horrid_ connotation! Surely, it could be meant positively as in, 'Hey, that girl is cute'. But by no means was it as powerful as 'Damn, she's _hot_!'.

So Tai Lung knew exactly where Po was coming from. More to the point, Su Lin's innocence, sweetness, and general cuteness…didn't exactly make her "sexy", in the traditional definition of the word. In fact, long before he had any romantic involvement with Mei Xing, when Tai Lung still thought he had a chance with the panda girl, he had even entertained certain fantasies…concerning the two of them and a private room for a very long—and very naughty—night. But now that he recalled it, he also recalled feeling like a despicable, dirty old man at such sordid thoughts about the panda girl. Now, granted, at twenty-six, Su Lin was not technically a "girl"—she was a _woman_, if those curves were any indication (and believe him, they were)—but in all honesty…she was more 'aww'-inducing that awe-inducing.

"I know I'm not one to talk," he started to say, "But maybe…have you talked to her about…?"

"About…?" Po echoed. "You mean, about…you know?"

Brusquely, as was his nature, the snow leopard snorted. "Sex, Po, have you talked to her about sex?"

Po didn't say anything.

"You feel dirty at the thought of it, don't you?"

"No, that's not it; we've talked about it, sure, and she said she wants to wait until marriage, but lately it seems like…I mean…like she's changed her mind, I guess? But I know why she turned me away last night, I'm not stupid," he patted his still-ample stomach. "I'm not the kinda guy a girl like her deserves: a hunk."

Tai Lung said nothing.

"I could probably stand to lose a few pounds, like ten, maybe…or fifty."

Tai Lung shifted his weight uncomfortably.

"But looks don't matter, right? I mean, I've got plenty of redeeming qualities…"

Now he knew why he was so uncomfortable; Tai Lung remembered Su Lin's sudden _blitzkrieg_ from the other day. "Po," he begged, "Please don't do this to me. Please, _please_, if you respect my masculinity—and yours—do not ask me what I think you're—"

"If you were gay, would you find me attractive?"

He gritted his teeth and growled. "—_frick_!"

"Totally a hypothetical question."

"Po, I _do_ care about you, but not enough to dignify that with a response." _Not again... No, I am __**not**__ going to tell him he's pretty! A man can only tolerate so much!_

"You've really got a knack for this therapy thing, you know that?" the panda sardonically replied. "Besides, I don't get why you're so uncomfortable talking about this—you kissed Dalang a year ago."

"That was different! That was a spin the bottle game and I was drunk—_we_ were drunk—we were _very_ drunk."

"So it _was_ you who moaned…" Po said, a smirk slowly growing on his face.

Tai Lung's fur frizzed up in irritation, "I did NOT moan!" He turned away from the panda and stood to leave. "And just for that, you can figure out your problems on your own—"

But he didn't get very far when he heard the panda gasp, then fall over onto his back. The snow leopard paused with narrowed eyes, "Oh don't think that's going to work—I know you're faking."

After a long, tensely silent moment, he felt the blood rapidly drain from his face. "Po?"

Po wasn't moving.

"_Po_!" he scrambled to the ground, slapping the panda's cheeks. "Po, come on, mate, this isn't funny. Wake up!"

But Po was nowhere near enough to hear his friend's desperate pleas. As soon as Tai Lung had started to walk away, the panda had felt a surge in his brain, like being struck by lightning, a phenomenon that shocked him into unconsciousness. White light flashed in front of his vision before he fell into inky blackness, and woke in a strange place…

* * *

When he came to, he was staring straight up into jade green eyes. At first confused why he wasn't seeing Tai Lung, he quickly connected the dots.

"Was that really necessary, Master Oogway? Tai's got enough problems, he doesn't need a heart attack," the Dragon Warrior noted.

Oogway smiled thinly, offering a spectral hand to the panda. "You will have to forgive me, my young friend, but this is not an occasion to give pause. I needed to get your attention quickly—"

"Well, you got it," Po remarked, sitting up. "What's so important that it couldn't wai—"

Oogway's interruption was something significant, and he knew it; someone as patient as the late sage would not be so hasty unless absolutely necessary. When the tortoise continued, Po listened aptly: "This is something that can not wait, Dragon Warrior. Darkness is coming to the Valley again."

Po rested his elbows on his knees as he complained, "Can't this place go a year without some bandits or an army or…something? This is a bit much."

"It is not the Valley's citizens who are in danger, Po Ping," Oogway warned. "This message is an urgent one: prepare yourselves, you and Tai Lung, for your greatest adversary is coming."

"We defeated Jiao Shen!" the panda exclaimed. "Who could be worse?"

Oogway looked like he wanted to say something further, but either decided against it, or was forced to acquiesce to the unknown laws of the spirit world. "I cannot reveal his name; do to so gives him power, though it is not power he seeks."

"So what does this guy want? Money, infamy…?"

"It is not as simple as all that, my friend," the sage said, quietly beckoning the panda to follow him. Though much paler than in life, Oogway still carried the characteristic calm that instantly put the panda at ease. Po found it odd, of all the times he had meditated and come upon this limbo in the previous months, sometimes alone, and sometimes with Tai Lung beside him, Oogway had never taken him—or either of them—past the spot where they had entered. His most important instruction, of course, was not to touch anything, or to be sucked into the afterlife as a result. Po couldn't shake the dread of unintentionally doing just that.

"This man is no man," the tortoise said, lumbering—no, floating—along. _You're in the spirit world. Spirits don't walk, they float. A durr,_ Po chastised himself.

"He is a creature lacking any semblance of goodness that we know," the sage continued. "Our rules and laws, our society, indeed our very natures are foreign to him, repugnant, weaknesses. Jiao Shen, for all his infamy and his savagery, was still a man. He was a man who loved and lost, he was a man with a family, with sons that he—believe it or not—cared for. He was a man with fears, as we all have fears. He was a man with limits, as we all have limits, and a man of little mercies…and I emphasize _little_ mercies."

"So you're saying this new guy…"

"…Is worse than Jiao Shen," he completed. "I have spoken with the spirit of Dalang's dear mother, Ming Hua, and she has confirmed my fears. This is a man that Jiao knew very well."

"They were in cahoots with one another?"

"Jiao Shen tried to have him killed."

"Close enough," the panda shrugged.

Oogway chuckled, putting him back at ease. "Perhaps, but something you must remember…Jiao Shen never suffered a man to live, once that man's name had been added to his black list. The fact that this man outlived him…"

"That's a big deal, isn't it?"

The tortoise nodded. "Yes, it is a very big deal. This creature is not one easily dispatched. He lives and acts according to a primordial law, one that predates civilization as we know it, to a time when the only law was to survive, by any means necessary. Fighting this one means that in order to survive, it would mean throwing away all the lessons you learned, and giving in to your baser instincts."

He felt the dread rising up with the bile from his churning stomach. He had spent his whole life learning to respect all forms of life, and in the span of three years, Tai Lung had gone from the boogey man that sent chills down the spines of every rampage survivor into an upstanding and productive member of society. If what Oogway was saying were true, that meant that in order to protect the valley…Tai Lung had to become a monster again. Po wasn't paying attention when Oogway turned his head to look at him; his mind was too preoccupied with the realization that had come to him.

"…I am very sorry," the tortoise said mournfully. "You will have to go out and meet him in battle, or he will destroy everything dear to you, to both of you."

"Why isn't Tai Lung here? Why aren't you telling this to him, too?"

"He will learn when the time is right. As you said, he has enough problems. But I must tell you that while you have learned the secret of the Dragon Scroll, so must Tai Lung must learn the secret of the Phoenix Scroll."

Po fell silent for a moment, digesting this new information. "Wait, I thought that didn't exist? Shifu said it didn't exist…"

"That is because Shifu never knew about it. There is a master, a monk, who lives in the west, in a monastery at the foothills of the world's tallest mountains, who guards the secrets of the Phoenix Warrior. If you are to defeat this threat, and the threats that come in his wake, both of you must train with this master. The lessons you have learned with Shifu are the first step; the teachings of Master Sun Bear are the next."

"I thought our training was more or less done? I mean, Tai's been schooling me on the Thousand Scrolls…"

"It is not enough, and not enough time," the tortoise explained as they stopped at a ghostly pond. He touched his spectral claw to the water, causing ripples to break across the surface. To Po's wondering eyes, images appeared, of a mountain fortress—no, a monastery—made of deep red sandstone, where brightly colored prayer flags flapped in the mountain winds. Within its walls, monks in red and orange robes sat outside at the mercy of the elements, chanting and praying. "This is the monastery, in Tibet," Oogway explained. "You and Tai Lung must leave at once. Follow Master Sun Bear's teachings, and listen to the wisdom he gives you. His methods may seem as unorthodox as my own…but then again, that seems to be a trend among the students I trained," the tortoise smiled knowingly.

Po smiled, then froze when he saw something else in the reflective pool. A pair of blue-green eyes glaring at him from beyond the pool's rippling waters, eyes that crinkled into an unseen primal grin, before claws ripped into view, tingeing the water with blood.

Oogway drew his claws across the pool's surface, immediately dispelling the vision, clearing the red away to reveal crystal clear water. His wrinkled face was grim as he turned to the Dragon Warrior. Po swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry.

"Was…was that him?" the panda asked.

Oogway said nothing.

"You think we can take him?"

When Oogway spoke, he said gravely, "I do not _think_ so…I know that you _must_."

"But what if we can't? Me and Tai are just two guys…and if this new guy is worse that Jiao Shen…" he shuddered at the memory of that horrific battle against the Amur tiger. "Jiao almost killed us. If we could barely handle him, even with the Furious Five, and Master Shifu and Miss Lien, how can the two of us handle this guy…alone?"

"Remember, Dragon Warrior, these two things." Oogway held up his claws, ticking off each point. "One, that you have friends in places you never knew you had; ones thought to be enemies will become allies, and those thought to be allies will show their true colors. And two, remember, you must draw from your own strengths, and weaknesses."

Po thought about it, trying to understand the cryptic speech. Nothing came to mind; he sighed and shook his head. "I'm not sure I understand…but if you want us to leave, I guess we should, huh?"

Oogway nodded slowly. "I do not expect this to be easy for either of you, Tai Lung especially. Convincing him to leave, when the birth of his first child is so close…it is not an easy thing for me to ask of him. But he is long overdue to assume his destiny. He must go, for his sake, for his wife's sake, for the sake of their child."

For some inexplicable reason, Po felt a chill. "Does that mean this guy…he might hurt our families?"

"If he is not stopped, your loved ones' safety will be the least of our worries."

The panda cast his eyes down at the pool again, deep in thought. Then something occurred to him so fast, that he was amazed he hadn't thought of it sooner. "Hey, um, if it's not too much to ask…maybe you could ask Tai's mom to look over Mei Xing while he's gone? That might help get him to go…"

Po couldn't place why that knowing smile on the tortoise's face was so interesting, but before he could figure it out, Oogway turned away. "We shall see, Dragon Warrior, we shall see…"

* * *

"Damn it, Po! Wake the bloody hell up!" Tai Lung shouted, violently shaking the panda by the shoulders. No sooner had those words passed his lips that Po's tubby body suddenly came back to life, striking the snow leopard with a perfect uppercut to the chin. Po sat up and looked around, trying to get his bearings as he recovered from the vivid vision.

"Wow," he huffed, "that was intense."

"You fat _fool_!" Tai Lung snapped. "Why the hell did you hit me?!"

Po scowled. "What happened to those fat comments 'being in jest'?"

"That was _before_ you punched me in the face!" Tai Lung retorted, rubbing his aching jaw. "Not to mention you near scared the hell out of me—I thought you were dead!"

"Well," Po said, brushing off his clothes. "Technically, I was."

He gave Tai Lung a moment to digest the implication before the snow leopard groaned. "Could that daft old turtle have at least waited until we were past the _omms_?"

"Tai, something big is going down," the Dragon Warrior said seriously. "Oogway said that there's this big enemy on his way to the valley, and means to destroy it!"

"…Can't this place go a _year_ without an attempted invasion?" the snow leopard griped. "I mean, if it's not the Jiao clan, it's a bunch of bandits, and if its not bandits, its assassins… And furthermore, who could be worse than Jiao Shen?"

Po looked grim, and bit his lip.

The snow leopard noted the panda's unease, and sobered immediately. "What is it? How bad is it?"

Po only needed to say one word. "Bad."

* * *

"You're sure of this?" Shifu asked.

"Positive," Po said. "If Oogway thought it was serious enough, then we gotta pay attention, we gotta do _something_, you know?"

Shifu sighed and rubbed his temples as he fought off the impending headache. He didn't need this. Couldn't this valley go one year without an attempted invasion, or some other kind of trouble? And now, as the Grand Master of the Jade Palace, protecting the Valley of Peace was now his sole responsibility…and he was beginning to wonder how Oogway was so calm all the time. His wife, Wu Lien, said it was within his nature to be so high-strung, but Shifu had doubts about that.

The three of them—Shifu, Po, and Tai Lung—were meeting in the Sacred Hall of Warriors to discuss Po's vision. After the panda had related to both of them what he had seen and what Oogway had imparted to him, the red panda and snow leopard had fallen into an uncomfortable silence. Shifu held his Late Master's staff in his old hands and thought hard, pondering over the tortoise's cryptic speech.

"If this is indeed someone Jiao knew well," the Grand Master began, "it is very likely Dalang might know something about him. I would ask him first, to see if we can glean anything."

"If he does know anything, he's not talking," Tai Lung sniffed, arms crossed over his chest. "He'd rather have every tooth pulled from his skull than talk about his family."

Shifu eyed him, "Be that as it may, it is still important to know more about this before proceeding."

"And how do you suggest we do that?" the snow leopard asked.

Shifu furrowed his brows, "I do not run head-long into a battle if I do not know something about my opponent."

"We know he's got blue eyes," Po said, trying to be helpful. "And that he's really savage and stuff."

"_That_ narrows it down," Tai Lung said as he rolled his eyes.

"But hey, maybe this guy Oogway mentioned…Master Sun Bear, what if he knows something?"

"Sun Bear?" Shifu gaped. Po caught Tai Lung's look and understood—there was a reason Shifu looked so pale.

"Master? Somethin' wrong?"

"How can he…" Shifu murmured. "It's not possible, it can't be. I thought he was dead…"

"Well, apparently he's not," the snow leopard said flatly. "So what do you suggest, that we go seek him out at this temple…wherever it is?"

"Oogway said it's at the foot of the uh…what're those mountains called, in Tibet?"

"The Himalayas," red panda and snow leopard chorused.

"Yeah, those."

"I'm not comfortable with you traveling so far outside the empire," Shifu confessed. "The Valley of Peace—like Tibet—is an autonomous territory. We rule ourselves, but unlike Tibet, we pay tribute to the Emperor; that is the only stipulation to our relative independence. But China as a whole is a completely different beast, so to speak. Their laws are far stricter than ours here in the Valley, but conversely, it's also much more lawless."

"Isn't that a contradiction?" Po asked.

"Not if you've been out there before," Tai Lung answered. "I don't like the idea any more than you do, Shifu. And I'm not sold on it."

"If Oogway commands that you leave," Shifu sternly replied, "Then you are obligated to go."

"Oogway is _dead_, Shifu! D'you really expect me to listen to a _ghost_?" He winced as soon as he'd said it; it sounded much harsher than he'd intended. But it did hurt his former master, the only evidence was the glowering stare sent the feline's way. "I didn't mean it that way…"

"Of course you didn't," the red panda replied.

"What I'm saying is—like you stated—I want to know more before I go off on some wild goose chase for some bloke whose name I don't know, whose abilities and limits are a mystery…hell, whose _species_ I don't even know! At least with Jiao, I knew his tactics. And in case you've forgotten, now is not exactly a convenient time for me to go anywhere!"

Shifu closed his eyes and sighed. Of course, he knew it wouldn't be easy. When Tai Lung was still a baby, having to go out to fight bandits or assassins was especially difficult. The fact the infant cried despondently whenever Shifu so much as left the room didn't help either. It was even worse knowing that there was the very real danger that he wouldn't have come back to see his son greet him at the gates, smiling, laughing and happy, as if the red panda had never left. But that wasn't Tai Lung's situation now. Tai Lung had it harder; he hadn't even _met_ his child yet. Not for the first time, Shifu wondered if his rationale as a kung fu master was overruling his instincts as a father..and grandfather.

"I am fully aware of your situation, and I whole-heartedly sympathize with you," he explained. "But I need to say this much: are you comfortable staying here, letting Po go off on his own, to stay here with your wife? Are you willing to deny yourself your destiny—"

"Need I refresh your memory about my experiences with destiny thus far?" the snow leopard imparted with an arched brow.

"Forgive me, poor choice of words," he cleared his throat. "Though Oogway may not have been vividly clear in Po's vision, it sounds like the key to your future lies in that monastery, and with Master Sun Bear, if he truly is still alive…"

"Why don't you think he's still…?" Po started to ask.

"Because Master Sun Bear was already quite old when I first became a student here," Shifu replied. He sighed again and looked behind him at the Thousand Scrolls of Kung Fu. "Nearly seven decades…he should have passed long ago. But it is no matter—perhaps tortoises are not the only creatures blessed with longevity."

He turned back to his two students. "At the very least…it may be a boon to see if Sun Bear knows anything at all about this menace. I still think you should ask Dalang…" he paused when the idea came to him, then he smirked, "Or, a better idea…I could see if my wife would do the honors."

Tai Lung smirked, "He'll last five minutes."

"My money's on five seconds," Po added to the betting pool.

"_Focus_," Shifu reminded them, then took a deep breath and continued, "I need to look into the exact location of Sun Bear's monastery, see if I can acquire a map for your use. For your sake," he turned to Tai Lung, "I would not be gone longer than a month. If Sun Bear truly still lives, it would be wise for Po to stay there to learn whatever he can, while you return for the birth of your child. Does that sound fair?"

Tai Lung looked reluctant. It was certainly a fair trade, but the feline couldn't help the churning in his gut. Being away from his wife at such a crucial time—when there was two months left in her confinement—didn't sit well with him at all. Auntie had said—perhaps unwisely—that children could be born much earlier than the expected due date, causing both snow leopards to fret more than they already were.

As much as he loved his wife, he also had his friend to think of. Po had only left the Valley of Peace once, and it was only as far as Wudan Mountain, and to think of the panda being out there, naïve and alone, in the middle of the most lawless, anarchic territories of China…that didn't sit well with him either.

Po truly needed him, but so did Mei Xing. "Does it have to be me?" he finally asked Shifu. "Can't _you_ go?"

"Oogway mentioned nothing about me," Shifu said.

"So you always do as your master says?" he challenged. Immediately, Po felt the temperature in the hall drop, and a deep, uncomfortable feeling passed right through him. Before he knew it, a perfectly civil conversation had turned into a shouting match.

"Of course I do," the red panda gritted out. "The relationship between teacher and student is on a higher level in the eyes of heaven than that of parent and child. You of all people should know that!"

Po got right in between them to placate their rising tempers before it turned into an outright brawl. "Okay, okay, that's enough! I know you're both pretty bitter about the past, but you guys gotta get over it, alright?"

"This isn't something you just 'get over', Po," Tai Lung growled. "How would _you_ feel if your father didn't stand up for you, didn't help you when you needed it most?"

"We've been over this, Tai Lung!" Shifu snapped before Po could stop him. "You were not meant to be the Dragon—"

"I KNOW THAT!" the snow leopard roared. "You think I'm an idiot?! _Both_ of you beat that into my skull, ten times over! But would it have killed you to show a little gods-damned empathy at the time? Perhaps so, if Tigress is any indication!"

"How dare—" Shifu started to say.

"_You_ may be perfectly comfortable abandoning and neglecting your children," Tai Lung seethed, "But I _refuse_ to make the same mistake. I refuse to be _you_!"

The silence that followed was ironically deafening, the snow leopard's accusation ringing in their ears and echoing off the walls and green marble pillars. Po looked between his friend and master, and saw something pass over their faces at the same moment. Tai Lung was the first to move, turning on his heel and storming from the hall. "Oogway can piss off," he snapped. "I'm not going anywhere!"

Po started after him until Shifu stopped him. "Let him go, Po. If he wants to act so immaturely, let him."

"Didn't you learn your lesson from two years ago?" Po whirled on him, frustrated with the whole situation. "I thought being married to Miss Lien would've made you rethink your relationship with him."

"Filial impiety is a sin, Po, you know that," the red panda glowered.

"Maybe," the panda shrugged, then stared hard at the master, "But I think not being there for someone when they really need it is just as bad." The panda let that sink in before he sighed and turned to leave. "I'll try and talk to him, but I think it's best for everybody if you keep your distance for a while. This is something _we_ need to decide, okay? He's my friend, and he needs me. And master or no master, I'm never gonna let my friends down."

With that parting shot, the panda bowed as a courtesy to the small master and turned to leave, not bothering to wait for Shifu to dismiss him. The red panda, on the other hand, was just as perplexed and angry that Po would speak to him that way. That kind of behavior he was used to from Tai Lung, not Po. Before he could recover to rebuke his student, the panda was already gone.

* * *

"Tai! Hey Tai, wait up!"

The snow leopard clenched his fists and tried counting to ten to calm himself down, but couldn't help snapping at his friend, "Forget it, panda, I'm not going back to reconcile."

Po stumbled down the stairs behind him, trying to intercept him on his way into the village. The panda panted slightly from the run and paused to catch his breath before saying, "Not trying to get ya to do that," he panted. "I just wanna talk. Its not gonna do anybody any good if you go into the village mad at Shifu. Remember the last time that happened?"

Tai Lung halted in his stride and closed his eyes, feeling the all-too familiar clench on his heart. He sighed, regretfully replying, "As if you have to remind me..."

Po offered, "So why don't we go sit somewhere, get some tea, go on a hike, do some training or…something. C'mon Tai, I know he gets under your fur, but ya gotta let it stop getting to you…"

"I _can't_ let it go, Po!" he snapped. "I _trusted_ him, and when I needed him, he just—" he huffed, trying to dispel the rising anger and frustration. "I thought he figured it out…I thought he understood…"

"Think how much worse off you'd be if you still lived in the Jade Palace," Po pointed out. "My dad didn't have that great a relationship with his dad either. Or the rest of our family, actually. Even my relationship with _my_ dad was strained before I moved out. But he said he believes in the One-Hundred-Mile Rule."

"What rule is that?"

"The farther away you live from your family, the happier you are."

"If only that applied here," he said, glaring back up at the Jade Palace's front.

Po sighed and patted his shoulder. "C'mon, lets at least take a walk, okay? Give ya a chance to calm down before going home?"

"And what am I supposed to tell Mei Xing?" Tai Lung asked fretfully, beginning to walk down the steps again, but this time at a slower pace. "What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to do only what you're comfortable doing," the panda said. "If you don't wanna come with me to Tibet, you don't have to."

"So you _are_ going to Tibet."

Po shrugged, "I don't think I have a choice. But that's okay. It gives me the chance to use my awesome kung fu, y'know?"

"But alone? Po, its dangerous out there…"

"Yeah, but I'm the Dragon Warrior," the panda pointed out, puffing out his chest almost comically. "And I can do _anything_ I set my mind to, can't I? All I need to do is believe in myself, to be my own hero—"

"But that is not enough!" the snow leopard snapped. "Don't you get it? It is _dangerous_ out there. As much as I hate to admit it, Shifu has a point—it's stupid and foolhardy to travel alone."

"You travelled alone, when you escaped prison and tried to get the..." Po trailed off when he realized what was really going on. He frowned, and accused, "You don't think I can do this."

Tai Lung shook his head. "That's not it at all…"

"Is it?"

He paused, then raggedly sighed, "Fine, maybe it is. But the majority of it is simply this: you're the first real friend I ever had, Po. I…" he trailed off and muttered something.

"What's that?" Po asked. "Can ya speak up?"

Tai Lung sighed with reluctance, and repeated, "…I don't want to lose you."

They fell into silence for a long, uncomfortable moment, then Po cleared his throat. "Okay, compromise time. How's this: why don't you come with me, as far as the Thread of Hope?"

"You mean…just a trip to the Thread of Hope and back?"

"Yeah. Heck, you can even cross the bridge with me if it'll make you feel better. Then you can turn right back and be with Mei when she has the baby. You won't be gone longer than a couple days. How's that sound?"

Tai Lung paused, then answered hesitantly. "I…I suppose that would be alright."

"Great!" Po grinned. "Well, since you look like you're feeling a 'lil better, lets go back so we can pack, right?"

Tai only nodded, mulling over his options. But even as he thought how his wife would respond to the news, he also had to worry about the conversation he'd had with his friend earlier that afternoon. If Po were truly having problems in his relationship with Su Lin, why should he leave when…? That was when Tai Lung figured out the other motivation for Po's sudden decision. Po wasn't going to Tibet to save the Valley, and all of China. He was going to Tibet to get away from his problems.

* * *

Wu Lien sighed heavily and crossed her arms as she peered into the Sacred Hall of Warriors. She had just returned from teaching her last class of the day, intent on having a nice, quiet dinner with her husband, only to find him furiously scanning the scrolls in the massive library. She had seen Po and Tai Lung on her way up the slope, and knew from her nephew's glowering visage that the master and his former ward had had yet another disagreement. She knew both of them to be quite stubborn, and knew they were bound to butt heads occasionally. But whatever had been said had clearly done quite a bit of emotional harm to both.

Wordlessly, she stepped indoors as a cool wind kicked up outside. Shifu either wasn't paying close attention, or was intentionally putting all his focus into his search for…whatever it was he was looking for. He didn't even realize she was there until she was standing right next to him. He turned and jumped,

"_Aiya_, don't _do_ that!" he cursed.

"You knew when you married me that I was light of foot," she retorted, arms akimbo.

He grumbled, "I should buy you a bell, that way I know you're coming…"

"Did you have another fight?" she asked, ignoring his comment and getting straight to the point.

"With Tai Lung? What if I did?"

"What was it about this time?"

"Why do you need to know?"

"Because he is my nephew, you are my husband, and, as I'm rather fond of both of you, I like seeing you both happy. Besides that, I'm _not_ fond of being the go-between every time you have a conflict."

"You're better with words than I am," he shrugged. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"I'm not better—I just know that _what_ you say isn't as important as _how_ you say it."

He sighed, running his finger over the characters of the scroll in front of him, "Fine, so I'm a little more direct…"

"Direct? More like abrupt!" she sniffed. "Now will you tell me what's wrong, or will I have to beat it out of you?"

He arched a brow at the threat. "You would resort to domestic violence just to get me to tell you?"

Wu extracted her favorite fan from her bodice and flicked it open, a smirk on her face. "Would you put it past me?"

He returned the smirk for a fleeting moment, then sighed raggedly. "Lotus, as much as I love sparring with you, I'm not in the mood right now…"

She frowned. He looked like he truly regretted turning down their favorite pastime. It was hardly a surprising amusement; since their marriage, it had become commonplace for her to dance to the music he played on his flute, and, at times, to turn that same dance on him as a full-fledged sparring session. And despite their collective ages, Shifu always had the energy—and yearning—to spend such quality time with her. It made him feel young again. "What are you looking for?" she asked gently.

He looked over the unrolled scrolls, "A map to Tibet."

"You mean this map?"

He turned to her, and found her holding up an unrolled parchment, showing both topographic area and lines marking the major roads and highways of the southern part of China and its neighbors. "That…would be it, yes."

She put it down and lightly fanned herself, a casual look on her face. "Now will you tell me why you're going to Tibet, without running this by me first? I would think, of all people, you would inform your wife of any 'business' trips."

"This isn't my journey," he said, accepting the map from her. "This is for Po and Tai Lung."

She blinked in astonishment. "Tai Lung, on a trip? How can he leave, now, when Mei Xing is—"

"He's fully aware of the situation, as am I."

"And yet he's going?"

He sighed raggedly and shook his head. "Master Oogway appeared to Po in a vision and told him that he and Tai Lung must journey to the Phoenix Temple, in order to learn how to defeat a new threat…"

"A _new_ threat?" she asked incredulously. "Can't this valley go a year without some—"

"I _know_ that, dear," he groaned. "All I know is that we are dealing with a killer more savage than Jiao Shen, someone Shen knew well, perhaps a former member of his army. I also know that Oogway explicitly said—"

"No offense, dear," Wu said worriedly, "But I think that Oogway is wrong. This is not the time for _either_ of those young men to be going on a long journey."

"And what would you have me do?" he argued. "This is something they have to do…it is their destiny."

"To hell with destiny!" she huffed. "Those two have the power to write their own futures!"

"But what about Tai Lung?" he asked. "You and I know—or suspect, rather—that his destiny lies in that temple. Why should he postpone it?"

"He's waited forty-one years to assume his destiny. Two more months isn't going to kill him," she said logically.

"Is that why you are so adamant on their staying?" he asked. "Because of Mei Xing?"

"And Su Lin," she explained, and quickly pointed out, "Not to mention that the road there is treacherous, and…"

"But this can't wait." He heaved a sigh and explained, "I've had many occasions where I waited for too long to act, and it cost me too much. When I was younger, I foresaw a threat, and decided to wait to see what would happen. I ended up losing everything important to me," he looked back at her. "And I never want that to happen again." He was silent for a long minute, then asked, "Do you think I neglected Tai Lung and Tigress?"

She furrowed her brows at the sudden change of subject. "Why do you ask?"

"Just tell me—what is your impression?"

Wu paused, and almost looked guilty. "Are you sure you want me to be honest?"

"With an answer like that, I'm not very certain at all."

"The answer is…" she winced a little, as if knowing her reply would sting. "Well, yes, to a point, you were. True, you gave them a home, food, clothing, an education, and you reared them to responsible adults. Yes, you gave them all the material things." She sighed, running her fingers over the design on her fan. "But as far as emotional…lets face it, you could have given them a bit more."

He lowered his ears guiltily. "So I _did_ neglect them."

"No, you assumed—wrongly—that a strong kung fu warrior didn't need feelings," she stated. "You assumed that real warriors never cried, or didn't symphasize with others, but that's exactly what warriors do, Shifu: they identify with the ones they protect. You may be hard-headed, but you aren't callous, even though you sometimes act like it."

He stared at her, and she frowned at his hurt expression. "You wanted me to be honest…"

"You're right," he acquiesced. "I did, didn't I?" he sighed. "But that doesn't change anything. They still grew up into the people they are today, and I am proud of them, even if they didn't follow the paths I wanted them to."

Wu snorted. "And right there, you sound just like every other parent the world over! Shifu," she softly explained. "Parents want what's best for their children, and there is nothing wrong with that. But what _is_ wrong is when what the _parent_ wants is not what the _child_ wants, yet forces them to do what they want anyway. Say your family wanted you to be an accountant, or a lawyer…"

"I'd poison myself."

"My point exactly. You would have been _miserable_." She gently squeezed his shoulder. "Now look at Tigress and Tai Lung: are they miserable, now?"

He shook his head. "No…Tigress is happier than I've ever seen her. Tai Lung is happy, perhaps, though he feels something is missing…"

"Only because he's a perfectionist, like you taught him to be," she said, but there was a hint of playfulness there. "And he's just like _you_. Men like you, in my experience, are _never_ truly satisfied, because they want everything in their lives to be perfect. The problem is that perfection doesn't exist, and has never existed."

"So we settle for what we have?"

"You _appreciate_ what you have," she said with a hard edge in her voice, and Shifu knew she'd taken his comment the wrong way.

"Lotus, darling, that came out wrong," he said, turning to placate her.

"No, no, I understand," she said evenly. "Can't have the perfect subservient wife, so you _settled_ for me; can't say that I blame you."

He quickly got on the defensive. "I _never_ settled on you—I love you just the way you are. Would I have married you if I didn't?"

"The problem isn't settling for something less, Shifu," she charged. "The problem is not appreciating what you have. I spent forty years of my life on the run, and sometimes, I had absolutely nothing: no home, no food, no money, only the clothes on my back. I know my life wasn't perfect, and still isn't, but I'm _alive_, aren't I? Aren't I healthy, well fed, with a roof over my head? That's the difference between us: I'm grateful for everything I have, even if it's the little things; you take things for granted."

He set his jaw and closed his eyes, not wanting to argue any further. Truth be told, he knew she was right. He _did_ take things for granted, and when he saw he was losing something, he fought to keep it, even if it was struggling against him.

But she had made mistakes, and could be just as controlling as himself! _Don't bother_, he scolded himself. _You're not angry at her, but you're taking it out on her because she's here. That's not fair to her and you know it._ He sighed and crossed his arms.

"I should go down and apologize, before they leave."

"Even if you did," she said. "Neither of them appears in the mood to talk." She looked down at the map and then flicked her jade-green gaze back to him. "I'll take these down to them, with your well-wishes."

"Take down some advice, too, if you would," he requested, his voice taking a sudden grave tone. Whatever he was about to impart seemed to press down on his shoulders, making him look older than he was. "Tell them that as soon as they step out of this valley, they should not draw attention to themselves. Just by name and title alone, they have made more enemies in the past three years than any other warrior in China's history."

* * *

"So you'll be gone two months?"

"Looks like it."

"So its just gonna be me and your Pops holding down the fort here?"

"Yep, least until Tai gets back in a few days."

"You sure you're packing enough food?"

Po looked over at Dalang, a skeptical expression on his face. "What're you saying?"

The tiger shrugged. "Not sayin' anything—I just know that between you two, you could eat a house's worth of food in a single day. Tai Lung especially."

"You can go bugger yourself, Dalang!" Tai Lung called from the pantry, making the tiger smirk in triumph.

"We're not that bad," Po huffed, concurring with his friend. "Besides, this gives me that chance to go on that diet…"

"What diet?" the tiger curiously asked.

"He thinks he needs to lose weight," Tai Lung said, packing maps into a knapsack. Wu Lien had come down to the restaurant without her husband to give Po a map to Tibet, and directions on getting to Sun Bear's temple. Po noticed quite conspicuously that Shifu had not come down to wish either of them a safe journey, instead passing the message through his wife. Sometimes the panda severely doubted Tai Lung got his stubbornness from his biological parents.

When they had gotten back to the restaurant earlier, Po told everyone about their plan and subsequent quest. Naturally, Mei Xing was a bit nervous to see her husband leaving, but relented when he promised to be back within a few day's time. Tigress, much to Po's surprise, was simply overjoyed, glad to see him finally getting out into the big wide world.

"You're going to have a blast!" she'd said. "I sometimes miss going on quests, fighting bad guys and everything, you know? Just keep your wits about you, don't trust anyone, and you'll be fine."

Dalang offered his own advice: "When in doubt, knock 'em out."

Su Lin, however, had only listened in still, pale-faced silence before slipping away with teary eyes, avoiding everyone's notice except her boyfriend's. Po felt a twisting in his gut, knowing that _he_ was the reason she'd left like that. And somehow, before he left, he needed to make peace with her.

"Why do you think that?" the green-eyed tiger asked. "Your gut's the thing that's saved your ass in almost every battle you've been in!"

"Yeah, well, need to think about my health, y'know?"

Tai Lung sent Dalang a significant look over his shoulder which the tiger caught just in time. That look was a warning not to look too far into the matter. "Gotcha. Well, if you're gonna be training with this master-guy, maybe that'll happen. All the exercise'll do you good."

"It won't be so bad," Tai Lung said, sticking a journal into his pack. "Where Po's going is only a few days' trek by foot. After you cross the Thread of Hope, your journey should only be about five or six days, give or take."

"Don't strain yourself, boys," Sonam said, laying out a bundle on the table. He unwrapped the package, revealing a fair share of knives, throwing stars and other weapons he had created in the Jade Palace's forge. "I want you to take these with you, as insurance."

Po warily handled a particularly sharp dagger. "Sonam, I thought you said you had faith in us?"

"I do," the eyepatch-wearing elder said. "But I've been through enough to know that a hope is never a guarantee." He sheathed a stiletto and handed it to his son. "Keep this on you at all times; you never know when you'll need it. I also got throwing stars, a rope dart—very handy in a straight—iron knuckles, because you never know; oh, and I developed _this_ little beauty a while ago." He held up a miniature crossbow, and demonstrated affixing it to his forearm. "Just point and fire; firing mechanism is this little button in your palm. Took me weeks to develop it…"

Tai Lung stopped him before he went any further. If there was one thing that could be said for both Sonam and Mr. Ping, it was that both fathers were as proud of their respective crafts as true artisans should be. But that also meant that, left unchecked, both men would go off on tangents extolling the virtues of their professions, much like Sonam was doing now.

"Dad, don't you think this is a little overkill?"

"Overkill?" Sonam asked rhetorically. "Wanting to protect my one and only little boy is overkill?"

"_Dad_…" the younger snow leopard groaned.

The blacksmith affixed his son with a stern look. "I lost you once, son; I'll be damned if it happens again." He pressed a bag of throwing stars into his hand. "Keep your wits about you, and remember what you're fighting for."

Tai Lung mutely nodded, knowing it would be better not to point out he wasn't even leaving the Valley proper. He sighed, looking up the stairs to where Mei Xing was resting. "You'll keep an eye on her?"

Sonam smiled, patting his shoulder reassuringly. "She's my daughter-in-law, isn't she? She's in good hands. Besides, we had a deal, you and I, I'll take care of her while you're gone."

"I won't doubt it for a minute." After a long pause, Tai Lung hugged his father, who patted his back. Sonam took in a deep shaky breath and said, "Make us proud, son."

For the life of him, Tai Lung would never know why his father had said this at that moment…but it was almost as if he knew.

Dalang and Po stood off to the side to allow the two males to say their farewells; it was then that the tiger took his chance to whisper in the panda's ear, "Before you go, you might wanna talk to Su Lin."

Po's ears drooped, and a pained look crossed his face. "I really don't want to…"

"So you're going to leave without saying goodbye?"

"C'mon Dalang, I can't stand to see her upset, you know that."

"She'd be more upset if you didn't." Dalang put his hand on the panda's shoulder. "I know its tough, but you'll be back, I know you will. I can tell you right now, if you don't say goodbye, you'll regret it forever, y'hear?"

Po sighed and cast his eyes around the kitchen. "You know where she is?"

The tiger patted his shoulder encouragingly. "Probably the lake, where else would she be?"

* * *

True to Dalang's prediction, Po found his girlfriend standing on the shores of the Valley's largest lake, the site of their date the night before, watching the moon's reflection rippling on the surface. Tiny waves lapped up against the pebbly shore at her feet, but she just stood there, clutching a tightly-knit shawl around her shoulders, her plump body shaking slightly…but Po couldn't place why, at first.

When he got closer, he heard a tell-tale sniffle, and watched as she raised her hand to wipe tears off her cheeks. Oh, this wasn't going to be easy at all, and Po almost lost his nerve. But he knew Dalang was right—if he didn't do this, he would regret it.

"Su Lin?"

She jumped, then quickly hid her face from him. "Po! I…I didn't expect you…"

"I know. I just…I just wanted to…to say goodbye. I mean, its not really _goodbye_, 'cause I'm coming back, y'know, but it's…just gonna be awhile, y'know?" _Wow, I really suck at this_.

She sniffed again and turned to him, tears glistening in her warm brown eyes. "I'm scared."

"I know. I am too." After a pause, he walked forward and opened his arms. She willingly met him, wrapping her arms as far around him as she could. He felt the hot tears soaking into his shirt, and all he could do was rub her back and offer sweet promises as a way to soothe her.

She pulled herself away, rubbing her arms. "What time are you leaving?" she asked.

He answered, "Early. You'll still be asleep."

Su Lin sighed and looked down at her hands, wringing them anxiously. She bit her lip, even as Po tried to assure her he and Tai Lung would be fine. She didn't like this at all, the fact notwithstanding that she had faith in her boyfriend's abilities. It was the unseen and as yet unknown threats of the outside world that worried her most. She sighed nervously, looking out over the lake before them. It was the scene of many of their dates, a favorite spot for both pandas, and the one place both of them knew they could have this conversation without anyone eavesdropping.

"I'm just so worried," she confessed. "I don't want anything to happen to you."

"Hey," he said, drawing her into his arms again. "It'll be okay, you'll see. Just keep your chin up, I'll be okay. Tai Lung's coming with me, and we're both awesome kung fu warriors—we'll be fine." _Especially after Sonam gave us the Jade Palace's full arsenal,_ he secretly added.

"You promise you'll be back soon?" she whispered against his shoulder.

"I'll be back so fast you'll wonder if I ever left!" he said, giving her a gentle squeeze. "I don't want you to worry about me—though I know you will—but let me just tell you…" he pulled away to look her deep in the eyes so she could see his sincerity. "I wouldn't hurt you like that. I _will_ come back to you, I promise."

Su Lin forced a smile, but her brown eyes betrayed the fear and sorrow she felt. Po would have given anything to assuage her worries, done anything to get her to smile for him, one more time.

"I'll wait for you," she said quietly. "Every day that you're gone, I'll be waiting for you to come back. Just…be careful."

"Of course I will," he smiled. "I mean, I do kinda love ya," he winked. She finally smiled, giving a short laugh as a rosy tint grew on her cheeks. She gripped his hand, smiling back at him. "I love you, too, Po."

The silence that followed was normal for them; when in each other's company, oftentimes, words were unnecessary. Completely superfluous. At that moment especially, all that mattered was the two of them being in each other's arms, comforting each other before the Dragon Warrior's departure.

"I wish the Five could go with you, or even Shifu, or Auntie, just so I know you won't be alone," she whispered. "But I know they're needed here, too."

Po only nodded; after another pause, he said, "And Tai needs me. I already know what my destiny is, he doesn't. I kinda wish he was coming with me to the temple, y'know? If this Sun Bear guy knows anything that can help him, well, I gotta be there for my friend, don't I?"

"That's what I love about you, Po," she said, nuzzling him under his chin. "One of many things. You're so selfless, putting others before you…but remember what you told me right before our first kiss? I want you to care about _you_, too."

"I will, and you know it. Take care of yourself, promise?"

"I promise."

He held her in his arms again, rubbing her back reassuringly. She surprised him by pulling away, appearing deep in thought. "Something wrong?" he asked.

When they finally locked eyes again, Su Lin appeared conflicted, even nervous. But the female panda was full of surprises, as her boyfriend well knew. But even he wasn't prepared for what she had planned.

"Oh…_screw_ it," she said with finality, then grabbed him by the front of his robe and brought him down to kiss her. Po made a bearish noise of astonishment when she crushed her lips against his in a desperate, heated kiss. He'd never known her to be so aggressive…not that he minded, of course. But he was so astounded by the fiery passion behind that kiss that he froze before the heat of the moment brought welcome chills…among other reactions.

When Su Lin finally pulled away, she fixed him with such an intense stare, he felt as if his knees would give out.

"Just a little something to remember me by," she said in a tone that was startlingly seductive for such an innocent. "And a reminder of what to expect when you get back."

After a kiss like that, Po wasn't sure if he wanted to go anywhere at all! His mind fogged over from the afterglow of the kiss—had that been her tongue, he wondered?—and didn't immediately recognize the soft peck on his cheek that followed. He should have said something romantic, something that would make her swoon almost as surely as she had done to him. Unfortunately, the only coherent thought he had was:

"Okay."

* * *

As nervous as she was to be left alone while her husband went on this quest, Mei Xing was honestly beginning to get annoyed. It had been charming, heartwarming, in fact, the way he had started to dote on her the minute she gleefully announced her pregnancy. But perhaps it was his feelings of guilt that prompted him to pay particular attention to her now, as he was preparing to leave, and currently fulfilling his husbandly duties.

"Are you sure you're comfortable enough?" he asked, fluffing up her pillows. "Is the tea hot enough; is it to your taste? It's not too bitter, is it, or too weak? Are you hungry for anything? Are you hot, or cold? I can open a window…"

She rolled her eyes and propped herself up on her hands, giving him a no-nonsense look. "Tai Lung, baby, I have enough pillows and blankets to last a lifetime of sleep, yes, the tea's fine, I've got the rice cakes you made this morning if I get hungry, and it is neither hot or cold in here so _please_ stop fussing over me like a mother hen!"

They were preparing for bed, Tai Lung ensuring that everything was in order. All of his wife's vitamins and prenatal medicines were on the nightstand, anything she could ever need was within reach, and as far as he was concerned, his knapsack was packed and sitting by the door, ready for him when he finally left.

The male snow leopard sighed and took off his shirt, crawling into bed with her. He wrapped his arms around her, making sure to savor it as long as possible. "I'm not comfortable doing this."

"I know," she said, gently caressing his arm.

"What kind of husband abandons his wife right when she's about to give birth?"

Mei Xing frowned. It sounded like he was beating himself up over this, which bothered her. If under different circumstances, or had their positions been switched, she'd likely not be able to go. And from what she was hearing, it sounded like he was having second thoughts.

"I know it bothers you, but if Master Oogway says Po needs you, shouldn't you go help your friend?"

The growl that tore out from his throat startled her. "I don't care what that damned turtle says!" he suddenly snapped. "He can hang this whole affair! I'm not going anywhere!"

"Tai Lung," she hissed warningly.

"Mei Xing, what do you want me to do?!" he demanded in frustration, sitting up abruptly. "After all the shit I went through, the twenty years literally stuck under a rock, in an honest-to-gods hell hole, suffering torture and neglect, not to mention everything that happened before or since…don't I deserve to live in peace?!" He took in a long, deep breath before letting it out slowly. "I don't want fame. I don't want glory, not anymore," he said softly. "I thought I did, but once I tasted it…it was bitter. I don't want it; I don't want it at all. All I want is what I have, here, with you, with our baby. I listened to Oogway and Shifu my whole life, and look what it brought me!"

Mei Xing's amber eyes widened as she digested what he was saying. "…You want to give up kung fu."

He chuckled, "Don't sound so surprised."

"Surprised?" she sat up. "Tai-Tai, sweetheart, kung fu is your _life_!"

"It _was_ my life!" he growled. "And look where it got me! Breaking every bone in my body, at least thrice! Starved for affection from the only person I wanted it from, a slave driver who wouldn't know what paternal love was if it bit him on that fluffy tail of his! Oh, and did I mention the twenty years in prison?"

"None of that has to do with kung fu, and you know it!" she snapped. "You went to prison because you lost your temper. You broke every bone in your body because you're a gods-damned perfectionist!"

"The hell I am!"

"Need I bring up the incident two weeks ago involving the bird's nest soup? And laying new shingles on the roof four months ago?"

Tai Lung winced; okay, she had him there. "All I'm saying," he continued, "is that I have never been happy—truly happy—until I moved down here. Until I married you, until I became Dalang's business partner…before that I had nothing, absolutely nothing." His body straightened with his resolve. "Damn what Oogway says. Hang the warrior's code. I have my priorities in order."

"But your destiny…"

"Is right here," he said, lying down with her again. "My destiny is right here, with you…with _both_ of you. Even if something feels missing, this is all I need, all I want." He gripped her hand, and she was surprised to find his hand was shaking…from trepidation or from barely controlled anger, she could only guess. Either way, she knew that once her husband had made his decision on something, it would take nothing short of divine intervention to get him to change his mind.

She sighed and nodded, feeling the baby kick hard against Tai Lung's hand. _It's like the kid's hitting him __**for**__ me,_ she mused. _Not even born yet, and this kid's sharp._ "Alright, honey," she sighed again. "But if you change your mind, wake me up to say goodbye, okay?"

He snorted, then scoffed, "I'm not changing my mind. I don't care what kind of threat this is. I'm not abandoning you, and that's final."

_But he's just fine with abandoning his best friend,_ she thought, but dared not speak it. Without further ado, they settled into bed, Mei Xing on her side, facing him, and Tai Lung lying next to her after blowing out the candle.

"I love you," she whispered in the darkness.

"I love you too," he replied, running his fingers through her fur.

* * *

Perhaps it was this final declaration as they fell asleep that caused Tai Lung's dreams to take a different turn. Usually, he was not one to dream: that was a habit he kicked in prison…or tried to. Flashbacks came every so often. When they did, they happened when he least expected, and usually at the worst possible time. For instance, when chopping vegetables for stir-fry. Or when training with Po. But this didn't trouble him so much as when it happened at mealtimes. The only people who knew about what happened to him in Chorh-Gom were his wife and his father, and he wanted it to stay that way. Still, it didn't help seeing everyone's worried expressions every time a flashback hit at dinner and his chopsticks fell from his nerveless hands.

Over time, it had gotten easier. He had friends now, a family, an identity he was comfortable with; perhaps not happy with it, but comfortable all the same. The residents of the Valley of Peace liked him again, and the Furious Five were at least civil with him. Crane and Viper were especially helpful, offering little distractions for him during training. And Dalang usually liked giving him new recipe ideas to try and create, again, providing distractions. It was almost as if they knew, he thought. But it was impossible. The only other people who knew…well, Sonam had taken care of them. Tai Lung had taken his father up on his offer to see what had happened to the last of the Anvil of Heaven…and it made his stomach turn. Whatever Jiao had done to the old snow leopard, it was enough to make him worry for his father's mental health.

_Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, though, does it?_ As if on cue, Tai Lung found himself under an apple tree, ripe for harvest. The sun was shining, and the crisp smells of ripe apples, deep wood smoke and sharp autumn breezes assailed his senses. He recognized he was in the "secret" training grounds in the old orchard, and to his delight he saw not only Po, but Su Lin, Auntie, Shifu and Sonam, and there… His smile widened into a delighted grin. There, sitting on a rock, looking on, was Mei Xing, holding a squirming bundle in her arms. She seemed to sense his eyes on her, and she turned and beamed at him, wanting to show him the tiny little treasure in her arms.

Their child! He laughed joyfully as he bounded towards them. His friends and family turned to greet him, all warm smiles and waves. Mei Xing stood to hand the baby over to him, but as soon as he got close enough, she gasped in horror and recoiled, holding the baby to her breast.

"Mei, love, what's wrong?" he asked. Then the shadow fell across the sky. The comforting smells of wood smoke and apples turned foul in his mouth, tasting coppery blood and a sickly-sweet stench of death on his tongue. Mei Xing began to run, Sonam rushing to her aid.

"Dad, what—" 'What are you doing?' was what he intended to ask, but instead his voice lodged in his throat when he saw his father stop dead…a sword piercing right through his heart, and protruding from his back. Someone screamed, but Tai Lung didn't know who, so shocked to see his father's body fall, a look of pure, haunted astonishment on the old cat's face.

Another scream, this time coming from Su Lin. Tai Lung turned to see who the assailant was…and all he saw was a pair of blue-green eyes, the irises bearing no light, no soul, nothing behind the flat, savage, primal orbs. The glaring eyes suddenly brightened with the sickening sound of ripping flesh and the anguished cries of the snow leopard's friends and—_gods no!_—former master. Wu Lien had placed herself between Mei Xing and the attacker, and Tai Lung made to move to take the enemy down. This enemy was too strong, exhibiting a strength and speed he had never seen before. He knocked him to the ground, and before Tai Lung could recover, he heard the shrieks coming from his wife and child as the assassin's claws were unsheathed, the bloodied weapons striking and hitting their mark. The baby's shrieks were the loudest by far. But even above the infant's anguished cries was the laughter, the deep, throaty laughter, and the eyes burning into Tai Lung's own, daring him to fight back.

* * *

Tai Lung let out a short scream as he shot up in bed, panting and sweaty. His eyes darted around in the dark, hands fumbling to light the candle. He struck the flint without success so many times it was nearly rendered worthless, the snow leopard cursing until light suddenly flooded the room.

"Honey?" Mei Xing asked softly, holding her own lit candle aloft. "What's wrong?"

He looked over at her, choking back a sob of relief. Wordlessly he hugged her, holding her as closely as he dared. Before he could even utter a word of explanation, Mei Xing hit the nail on the head:

"Bad dream?"

"Yes."

"Was Oogway there?"

"No."

"Was the bad guy there?"

He took a moment to think about it, then remembered what Po had said about the eyes… "Yes."

She paused, then nuzzled him. "I'm not completely versed in the otherworldly…but maybe the spirits are trying to tell you something?"

He wanted to refuse. He wanted to stubbornly refuse and get back to the life he wanted to live. But that was the point of the dream, wasn't it? That dream showed the life he wanted: his closest friends, whole family, Auntie and Shifu and Sonam included, and of course his wife and their sweet little baby, their innocent unborn child… And that man, that _thing_, threatened it all.

His throat feeling dry, Tai Lung swallowed hard and coughed, "I…I think they're telling me I should go…go on this quest with Po, I mean. To Tibet. To stop this…this thing…from hurting you."

"I think that would be a good idea." She smiled and teased, "You see what happens when you don't listen to your wife?"

He chuckled, feeling relieved to have her there, and soundly kissed her. "What time is it?"

"Almost time for you to meet Po, actually," she said, eyeing the pack by the door. She heard her husband sigh and mutter something about getting ready. She directed him to some plain peasant's clothes she had set out. He slowly got up, put them on, and splashed water onto his face to wake himself up, a desperate effort to banish the horrible images from his nightmare. When he was ready, he knelt by her side, taking her hands in his.

"Any other advice before I leave?"

Mei Xing leaned forward and kissed him deeply, pulling away to give him a nervous, yet hopeful, look. "Just one: Come home safe."

* * *

Po was waiting outside, his pack by his feet. The panda tugged on the sleeve of the plain white robe he'd been given to wear. Wu Lien had given both him and Tai Lung the homespun clothes—identical gray robes and trousers—she had quickly acquired for their journey. The point was not to draw attention to themselves, and if they were similarly disguised as peasants, they were unlikely to become targets for assassins.

_And yet we're armed better than any assassin I've heard of,_ he ruefully thought, absently nudging his pack; though he had packed it with food, cooking utensils and a spare change of clothes, the rest of the space was taken up by the weapons Sonam had lent him.

The moon began to sink into the west as he waited, tapping his sandaled foot impatiently. Where was he? For a moment, Po wondered if Tai Lung had changed his mind, decided to stay at home. While he couldn't blame him, Po knew he needed Tai Lung for this mission. Before he'd been named the Dragon Warrior, Po had never even left the village. Now, he was expected to leave the Valley altogether. Tai Lung had spent half of his life outside the Valley, exploring China, and, a couple years ago, partaking in a hell-bent journey for a title he considered his birthright.

Something else suddenly occurred to him, and he felt like an idiot that he didn't think of it sooner. Perhaps the real reason Tai Lung didn't want to leave was more self-serving than anything else. The Valley of Peace didn't have an extradition treaty with the Emperor. If Tai Lung left the Valley of Peace, he risked being arrested and tried for crimes that had happened over two decades before; the fact he'd been forgiven by his victims would have meant nothing to the Emperor, and the snow leopard would almost certainly have been found guilty and executed.

So…perhaps Po could handle this on his own. Yeah, that was alright, actually, if the snow leopard stayed. It was kind of selfish of him to ask him risk his own life and freedom like that, and should something happen to him out there, who would be here to take care of Mei Xing and her baby? No, he decided as he put on his straw hat, it would be better for everyone if Po went out on his own…

"Sorry I'm late, mate, overslept a bit."

…Or maybe not.

Po whirled to find that Tai Lung had snuck out his open window and landed in a crouch behind him. Mei Xing was at the window and waved goodbye, sweetly smiling as she blew out the candle and returned to bed.

"I thought you weren't coming," the panda said.

"I almost didn't," he admitted. "I'll say this much, panda: when you get married, there are two little words that will make it a successful marriage."

Po arched an eyebrow, and asked, "And what're they?"

The snow leopard held up two fingers and ticked them off as he recited: "Yes. Dear."

He paused. "Yes, dear?" Po repeated. "That's it? The secret to a successful marriage is saying 'Yes, dear'?"

"Try it with Su Lin sometime."

"And it really works?"

"Its saved Dalang from Tigress' wrath on more than one occasion," he rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm ready when you are."

Po shouldered his pack. "Okay…did you get the travel bars?"

The snow leopard groaned. "Damn. No, but I will. Give me a minute, I'll be right back."

"They're in the pantry on the right," Po instructed. "Look for the flour canisters."

The snow leopard snuck his way up to the door, not wanting to disturb Mr. Ping lest the goose was still abed. Unfortunately, Tai Lung didn't nearly have much in the way of luck.

"…What are _you_ doing up?"

Mr. Ping turned away from the stove and smiled cheerily at the big cat as he chopped away at some carrots. "Ah, good evening Tai Lung! Or should I say morning? Anyway, I heard you stirring and figured you couldn't sleep…"

"Er…"

"…So I thought I'd at least keep you company!"

"Mr. Ping, I'm not here to cook—Po and I are going on that trip, remember? I need to get a few travel bars for the—"

"Ah yes, I remember, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. I have something to say…"

_Cripes, here we go…_

"Tai Lung, there's no way you can just leave and go off on some adventure while, by the way, your wife is soon to have your _baby_! That's just irresponsible!"

Even though Mr. Ping was by no means a disciplinarian—he doubted there was anything in the goose's nature to make him thus—the snow leopard had to admit that Po's father could lay him low by a very thick helping of Guilt, with a capital "G". The goose's guilt-trip brought up the memory of his nightmare. The images that came to him in that dream—no, the vision—made the snow leopard quake, his fur stand on end. The promise of a rampage from a killer more savage than even he had been brought nothing but chills, and if Tai Lung had learned anything in the past three years, it was that his purpose was to protect, not destroy. _Yet how ironic is it that I need to destroy in order to protect?_

"I'm not _just_ leaving, Ping...I really need to do this."

"And that's your problem, that sense of duty," Ping said, waving the knife around. "But, I understand why you want to do this, and I understand why Po wants to go, too. Mei Xing and Su Lin mean a lot to both of you. I may not know all the details, but I know you two are like brothers, and you take care of each other."

"Right," Tai Lung said, eyeing the sharply shining chef's knife as it cut through the air.

"You love your wife, right?" Ping asked, pointing the knife at the snow leopard, who choked out a quick affirmative answer. "And Po loves Su Lin," the goose continued, pointing the knife away (much to Tai Lung's relief), "And whoever or whatever this new threat is, I know you put your friends and family first—that's what I like about you, Tai Lung." Once again, the snow leopard was staring cross-eyed down the tip of a very sharp kitchen knife. "You know what needs to be done, for the good of others…"

"I haven't always…" he started, reminded of his past sins.

"Ah, but what's done is done, right?" Ping asked, flippantly waving the knife around in the air as he spoke, with as many gesticulations as the conversation allowed. "You may have made mistakes," (Tai Lung backed away as the knife pointed back at him) "But no one is perfect! The point" (Tai Lung wished he could laugh at the irony) "is that you've turned your life around and are making something of yourself. Matter of fact, you're one of the best chefs I've ever known, and so humble…"

The snow leopard snorted.

"Well, you're working on it," the goose said unconvincingly.

"Ping, I'm in a terrible rush…"

"Say no more, say no more, just tell me," he turned with the knife out. "When do you intend to be back?"

"No more than a month!" Anyone who had simply been listening would have thought the one who had said this was a much younger man, not Tai Lung. But in fact, the snow leopard's vocal pitch had risen as a result of seeing how close that knife was to a certain vital area.

Hearing this answer—high-pitched or not—made Ping brighten up considerably. "Oh good! One month of male bonding will do you both good. I was thinking, maybe…you could talk Po into proposing to Su Lin, hmm? Get me some grandchildren around here?"

Tai Lung's eyes were still trained on the knife. "I'll work on it."

"Good, good. Now, go do what you need to do…I'll keep an eye on things here."

"Are you sure? I'm getting some mixed signals…"

"Hmm?" Suddenly, the goose noticed he'd been holding the knife the whole time and set it down immediately. "Oh! I'm terribly sorry; no wonder you look so pale…"

"Travel bars, sir?" he asked with a twitching eye.

"Sure, sure, here you go." He waddled over to the pantry and brought out a wrapped parcel. "That should be enough to last you both. Now, have fun beating up bad guys!"

"Sure, sure…" he said unconvincingly. He started to back out through the door, but stopped at last minute. He looked at Ping a moment, the goose craning his neck forward, as if awaiting what the snow leopard had to say. Finally, Tai Lung cleared his throat.

"Thank you…for everything. I know it seems paltry compared to everything you've done for me, for Dalang, and especially Po…but just the same, thank you."

Ping beamed a welcome smile. "No thanks are necessary, young man. Just promise me you'll both be careful out there."

Tai Lung returned the smile. "Can do, sir." With that, he was out the door, closing it securely behind him.

"How'd it go?" Po asked when the snow leopard finally joined him outside.

Tai Lung shouldered his pack and turned his pale face to look at his comrade. "I never thought I'd say this, but your father might actually be scarier than Shifu…"

* * *

His blue-green eyes settled on the ruins of the prison, noting the snows that covered the ground and the giant icicles that hung down like fangs from the dark open mouth of the blown-open doors. The snows were deep and the air frigid, but compared to the winters in the land of his birth, these drifts were nothing. The leopard assassin lowered the hood of his cloak and strode forward to the crumbling prison, twitching his whiskers and swiveling his ears to catch every sound, every scent in the air.

His foot collided with something hidden in the snow. Curious, he knelt and brushed the powder away to reveal a hand. That hand was attached to a thick arm, and that arm to a thicker body. Ah, a rhino soldier, the leopard mused. Perhaps it was one of that bartender's former comrades.

The bodies were in remarkable shape, considering they were three years dead. Some had been picked at by scavengers, but most have been frozen in a twisted state of mummified rigor mortis, faces contorted in grotesque masks of misery. The leopard shrugged; well, at least this Tai Lung was thorough. He liked that.

He strode through the open gateway and inspected the apparatus that had been used to open and close the heavy doors, now blown to splinters. The chains and hinges were rusted and worn, but could probably still work. The leopard spied a torch in a wall sconce, and took out his flint. Striking several times, the torch ignited, casting an eerie red glow across the landing. Now, he was finally able to see into the depths of Chorh-Gom, and what he saw took his breath away. He swore he had seen enough that nothing would ever surprise him…but he turned out to be wrong. He hated being wrong.

What had once been an impressive labyrinth of walkways and towers was now reduced to rubble. The bridges were long gone, the result of the falling rock spires from the mountain's ceiling. The towers and storerooms remained, but these didn't immediately interest him. Instead, he prowled over to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the darkness below.

The deepest pit of hell, he thought with a smirk. His kind of place. And yet somehow, from the deepest bowels of the underworld, shackled with boulders and chains, Tai Lung had broken out, escaped, and sent every one of those rhinos outside straight to meet their Maker. That, the leopard had—and hated—to admit, was pretty damn impressive. His feline eyes peered closer, his pupils dilating to take in as much light as possible, and looking far below in the pale bluish radiance, he saw the very platform where he figured Tai Lung had knelt (if the single spear still embedded in the stone was any indication), intended to be there for eternity. Hmm, it seemed eternity was a bit shorter than those guards had expected.

Grunting and straightening, he pulled his cloak closer about his shoulders and looked down the halls to his left and right. Acting on pure instinct, he followed the hall to his left. He quickly found the armory, still stocked with various weapons and rusting equipment. Further along, the beginning of the guards' barracks, and further down, the officers' quarters.

Curious, he pushed open the door to the Commander's room, and stepped inside. He snorted. He would never understand the hubris of the highest military ranks. Just because one became a captain, or higher, they felt they deserved a king's treatment! Still, he admitted this…Vachir, had some good taste. There was fine liquor on the shelves, scrolls and maps on the walls, a desk littered with papers and scrolls, and a bed befitting a man of his rank. Otherwise, the décor was quite sparse, but that was to be expected. Army men typically didn't make good interior decorators. After a little more snooping, the leopard found something on the commander's desk. It was a scroll, bearing the seal of…

"Jade Palace," he gasped. He studied the document and smirked as he read. His Chinese was rudimentary, but he knew enough characters to piece the message together; had he known more Chinese, the message would have read accordingly:

_Commander Vachir,_

_It has come to our attention that your facility may not be adequate in successfully holding Tai Lung. Master Oogway has expressed concern that Tai Lung is perhaps much more resourceful than we originally gave credit. Your direct orders are to double the guard, double their weapons, and apply extra precautions concerning your inmate._

_Be additionally vigilant; I know Tai Lung too well to think he has not given up his desire for freedom. Do not let him know that we are choosing the Dragon Warrior, for if he were to know, it would mean certain destruction. Those are your orders, make it so._

_Yours Respectfully, Master Shifu, Jade Palace_

So, somehow they knew ahead of time he would escape. Most interesting. The leopard set this aside and looked over the rest of the desk, searching drawers, drawing out various scrolls and looking through them. He came upon one the confused him, yet fascinated him all the same. It appeared to be…an instruction book. For a device that reminded him, strangely, of a tortoise shell. There were long poles to be placed in various holes, though for what purpose, he couldn't say. The majority of the Chinese characters were unfamiliar to him, but he recognized two: the character for "energy", and another for "lock".

"Hmm…" Licking his dry, chapped lips, he decided to hold onto this scroll. Perhaps he could find some Han who was willing to read it to him, to explain it better. He was better at speaking Chinese than reading it. He hadn't had much need for reading during his years with the Jiao clan, and, as an old man rather set in his ways, he wasn't planning to read any Chinese classics anytime soon. Maybe that smallish-type wolf he met at the inn would oblige…

Whatever this device was, it soon became clear from viewing other drawings and scrolls that it had been used to restrain the prison's one convict. And whatever it was, it looked damn complicated. So, he was starting to surmise, not only was this Tai Lung strong…but smart too. It was a possibly lethal combination.

The leopard however, fought down the strange chill he felt. He scoffed. He no longer believed in ghosts, or demons. Heaven and hell and the gods didn't exist, he'd decided years ago. But something…perhaps the thought that this Tai Lung—and perhaps the Dragon Warrior—would be more trouble than he'd originally given either of them credit, was what caused the shivers to raise the hairs on his neck.

Still, a job was a job, he thought, tapping his claw on the desk as he pondered. And he _did_ like challenges. From what he had gleaned, the gossip was most certainly true. A slow, cruel smile grew on his lips. The gossip was true, which meant this…this would probably be _fun_.

Gathering up the scroll and loose drawings, he tucked them inside his tunic and stalked out of the commander's room. The sun had set outside, casting a gloomy pall over the snowcapped mountains. He had two days to get back to meet this White Wolf fellow the smallish-type wolf seemed to fear so much. And, after all, a job was a job. And three thousand _yuan_ plus twenty percent interest for a dead panda and snow leopard was very tempting…

He turned away from the ruined prison and its ghosts, lifting the hood of his cloak. He smirked triumphantly from the things he had learned about his quarry. Things were about to get very interesting.

* * *

Nothing much to say here. Creepy assassin is creepy, Po's running away from his problems, and Tai Lung, of course, is wracked with guilt about going on this mission. I don't expect their decision to be popular, but hey, makes for a more exciting story, doesn't it?

Also something I wanted to point out so there's no confusion: an Amur leopard looks more like its more familiar cousin, the African leopard, but Amur leopards are the rarest cats in the world, with about 40 individuals in the wild; that's it, just 40. Most of them are concentrated in Western Russia and some are believed to live in Siberia. They are critically endangered, which is a shame because they are such beautiful creatures, and, like the snow leopard, incredibly elusive. That elusiveness I wrote into our assassin friend, since we never know exactly what he's thinking, and is still quite a mystery (though that's pretty intentional ;).

As always, please read and review!


	5. Chapter 5: Into the Woods

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda (obviously), and no money is being made from this; this is for pure entertainment. But the OCs and the text below _do _belong to me, so please do not use without my consent.

Mostly filler this time around, but there's going to be a lot of stuff happening very soon, trust me. I'm hoping to address a few concerns that came up after "Present" ended, particularly Tai and Mei's relationship, and a little more about Mei's past. Also—and this will likely prove to be a trope throughout this fic—I will probably make a few Tai/Po shippers very happy ;)

Without further ado, enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 5: Into the Woods

* * *

It took about a day and a half to reach the Thread of Hope, marching double-time. The whole time, while Po panted and wheezed, struggling to keep up with his feline companion, he kept wondering whether Tai Lung would accompany him across the bridge, or return home. The snow leopard had not been explicitly clear about what he would do. Po mused over the options both of them had, and if his friend's reticent silence was any indication, Tai Lung was debating the same things.

They stopped just short of the first span, looking out over the gorge called the Devil's Mouth, a rather apt name because the spires that jutted up from the mists looked suspiciously like massive black fangs.

"How did you cross that without freaking out?" Po asked, feeling slightly nauseous at the thought of having to cross it. "I'm nowhere near the bridge and I'm getting the creeps."

"I may be afraid of certain things, Po," Tai Lung explained, dropping his bag at his feet and stretching out his back. "Fear of heights isn't one of them."

"So that's how you were able to fight on that bridge?" the panda asked, pointing at the span directly in front of them.

"Well…" he paused. "That, and I was pretty focused on getting the Scroll at the time. I didn't think of anything else, really." The snow leopard glanced at his friend and nodded his head back. "Why don't you go rest? You look tired."

"Wonder why?" Po asked, plodding back to sit under a tall pine; Tai Lung ignored the sarcastic retort. Dropping his pack by his side, Po leaned back against the scratchy bark and breathed in the crisp clean scent of pine needles. He rubbed his aching feet, sighing as Tai Lung knelt next to him. "I know you wanna get back home and all, but isn't rushing to get here a little much?"

"I don't like leaving her there, all alone," the feline said, staring back at the way they came. "I don't like it at all. And I doubt she's perfectly alright with it."

"Yeah, but Mei seems pretty accommodating," Po pointed out.

"That's what worries me," he muttered. The panda overheard, giving him a curious look. Tai Lung caught the glance and sat cross-legged, tugging absentmindedly at his sleeve. "She won't say it, but I can tell, sometimes…maybe she still thinks she's married to her ex."

"If you reminded her of that guy, why would she marry you at all?" Po asked.

"I assume because she loved me, and that I loved her," Tai Lung said. He sighed through his nose and brought his knees up to his chest, resting his arms on them. "Sure, when we first met, we weren't exactly civil with one another. But since I started courting her, I've never treated her with an ounce of disrespect. Yet she has these little habits that bother me. Sometimes…you know me, I get frustrated from the work I do—"

"Because you're a perfectionist."

"Yes, panda, because I am a perfectionist," he gritted out, hating to be reminded of that fact again; yet, he was secretly proud of being a Type-A person. "I haven't gotten _angry_ in a long time…you've only seen me completely enraged about twice since you've known me. Shifu can only count on one hand how many times he's ever seen me _truly_ pissed, in my entire life. Yet I show the least bit of irritation, and she starts apologizing, trying to calm me down in every way she knows how. But you know, that only makes me more annoyed. She's _not_ a burden to me, and I'm sick of her saying so. I _like_ doing things for her, and I thought she knew that!"

Po looked down at the pine needles and ventured, "Tai, she was with that guy for ten years…and before that, I bet her dad didn't treat her too well, either, right?"

He nodded, "That's right. I suppose any father who would sell his daughter to settle a debt can't think too highly of her."

"My point exactly," the panda theorized. "You're probably the first guy who ever treated her like a person, like she was valued. I bet she's not used to that."

Tai Lung thought back to an incident two years before, when he had yelled at her: "_I don't need an ulterior motive to be nice to you_". And he didn't, he never did. If he _did_ have an intention, it was to…well, to make up for scaring the living daylights out of her the night she stabbed him, and to make up for the mistreatment she had run away from (not to mention all the arguments and nasty comments they'd exchanged before they started dating). And he realized he was still doing it.

Was that why he was so angry? Well, angry was perhaps too strong a word…annoyed, maybe? "The past year, I've done everything to make her feel loved and wanted, to make her feel appreciated, so that she knows how much I love her. But you know what bothers me the most, right now?"

"What's that?" Po asked.

"It's that she thinks I _deserve_ our baby. She calls it _my_ baby, when _she's_ the one carrying it!" he complained, gritting his teeth. "_My_ baby, as if both of them were property!"

"Tai Lung," Po said sternly. "You can't expect to reverse a lifetime of abuse in two years. You guys've only been married a year, y'know."

"But _why_ can't she see I'm not like the other men she's known?" he begged, pointing out, "She doesn't act this way around Dalang or Shifu…"

"What about your dad? Does she act like that around him?"

Tai Lung paused to think about it, then realized, "…Yes. Yes, a number of times, actually. I thought…at the time, maybe his career as an assassin was what bothered her." He turned to look at Po. "Do you…you don't think she's afraid of…"

"Of male snow leopards?" Po finished. "It's possible. I mean, look at the first two examples she had."

Tai Lung hung his head and gritted his teeth. "If I ever meet her ex again, or her father, I'll kill them both." He looked up at Po's stern look. "Oh fine, maybe I'd just maim them." Po arched a nonplussed eyebrow. "May I at least punch them?"

"That might kill them."

"What about threats?"

"When you're still technically a criminal on the run? Making threats alone might getcha thrown in jail. Shifu had a point, you know; leaving the Valley could be a death sentence for you…"

"Which is precisely why we're not bringing attention to ourselves," he said, casting his eyes over the expanse of the Thread of Hope.

Po paused, his brows furrowed in confusion. "…Why do you always do that?"

The snow leopard stared, puzzled, "Always do what?"

"Always think so negatively?" Po said, leaning forward on his crossed knees. "That can't be Shifu talking, not all of it."

Tai Lung fell silent, then dropped his gaze, "You're not used to this, so I'm going to break it to you now, rather than you finding out the hard way: Life isn't all flowers and sunshine. Sometimes you're born with a bad hand, and die with a bad hand. Looking on the bright side of life doesn't work for everyone."

"But why not?" Po asked, debating. "People who are always downers aren't nice to be around, but if they looked at what they had, and appreciated it, then they wouldn't be so sad, would they?"

"It's not that simple," the snow leopard said. "You've been blessed with so much, and suffered so little. By the time I was your age, I had suffered worse than any man ever should. Forgive me, but a part of me is glad you're going on this mission so that you learn what loss really feels like."

Po didn't know how to respond to this confession. He was mad, of course, that his best friend seemingly wished ill upon him, but he was also sad to realize that…perhaps prison had been worse than Tai Lung had ever admitted. Shifu had said once, at Tai Lung's wedding no less, that the snow leopard had been such a happy child, and a bright-eyed, innocent youth, full of potential and awe at all of life's wonders. Shifu had also stated that he had no idea what had happened to that little boy, and echoed the panda's sentiments that prison must have been worse than the snow leopard ever said.

Po knew about the flashbacks. Tai Lung had confessed to it, but never discussed them. All he had done was explained that sometimes it happened, without warning, but that there was really nothing to be alarmed about, but that didn't stop Po from worrying. The first time Tai Lung suffered from one in front of Po, the panda honestly thought his friend had a heart attack. It had scared him, and though the snow leopard wouldn't admit it, the episode probably scared him too.

"I wish you'd talk to me about it," Po said.

Knowing exactly what he meant, Tai Lung set his jaw and refused. "There are some things you're better off not knowing." After a pause, he said softly, "Sometimes its not prison. Recently, it's been the Jiao war."

Po nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I still get nightmares about that."

"I'm glad I'm not the only one." His tone implied that was a gross understatement.

"He almost killed us," Po said, in a slightly disembodied way. "I mean, how close did we come to dying?"

"Too close," Tai Lung said, remembering the Spectral Plane where he had finally met his mother Nima. As much as he loved and missed her, he wasn't quite ready to join her on the other side. "I look at all I have now, and how little I had then, and wondered what would have happened if I had died. It's silly, morbid, as much as I know I shouldn't obsess over it, I still wonder…what if I had died, and not Dalang's brother? It should have been me, so why wasn't it?"

"Because you're the Phoenix Warrior, and Shang wasn't?"

The feline gave him a flat look. "Po, there's no proof."

"I think the cloud that formed over you after defeating Jiao Shen was pretty convincing. If you don't think that's enough, come to the Temple with me and _find_ that proof!" Po challenged.

"Panda," Tai Lung said, growling. "I know what my priorities are…"

Po accused, "And what about that nightmare you had the other night, right before we left, with our enemy attacking your family? What happened to that?" As soon as the last word left his mouth, Po choked, frozen with shock. What nightmare? Tai Lung hadn't said anything about…

Tai Lung froze as well, openly gaping at the panda. Po gasped, and realized with surprise, "How did I know about that?"

"…How _did_ you know about that?" his companion questioned, bewildered.

Po looked up at him, completely flabbergasted, and tried to rationalize, "I dunno. I guess I just…I mean, there's no way you ever change your mind about something unless there's some sort of divine intervention…It's true!" he affirmed at the feline's scowl. "Not only are you a perfectionist, but you're totally stubborn too!"

"Of course I'm stubborn, Po," Tai Lung said with an eye-roll. "I'm a _cat_."

"I'm serious, Tai. But…man, I really don't know how I knew…what else happened in that dream anyway?"

He saw the snow leopard shiver, the fur rising on the back of his neck.

"Do I wanna know?"

"A lot of people died in that dream," Tai Lung whispered. "It…well, it sealed the deal. I'll be straight, so that you understand: I _will_ go to Tibet, but I'll only be a short while, then I'll come home."

_Just as Shifu suggested_, Po thought. "That's fine. Seriously, if I need to stay for longer, that's cool. This Sun Bear guy can teach me a lot. You don't really need teaching, so I bet he'll let you go, considering the circumstances."

"I hope you're right."

They both looked over the span that disappeared into the clouds, then looked back at each other.

"Can we try crossing that in the morning?" Po asked.

"Of course we can. Not even I am mad enough to attempt that at night," Tai Lung scoffed. "Shifu didn't raise a fool."

They had a simple dinner over a small fire, which made strange shadows dance amongst the trees, like ghosts haunting their steps. The panda and snow leopard were on high alert, despite the fact they were still in the Valley proper; this was still an area known for bandit activity. It would serve them well to get into the habit of cautiousness, for once they crossed the bridge they would be at the mercy of both highwaymen and the Imperial Army. After the meager food, Po offered to take first watch, and give Tai Lung time to rest. The snow leopard almost declined, knowing how exhausted his friend had to be, but couldn't deny the wave of fatigue that had swept over him after his meal.

He made a bed out of dry pine needles and settled down for a cat nap, trying to calm his rising anxieties and racing thoughts. His attempts, he knew, wouldn't amount to much, and he prepared for a night of fitful sleep. Upon closing his eyes, however, that sleep further eluded him, when he got the feeling that he was being watched.

He cracked open an eye to see who his spy was, and found himself face to face with a pair of vibrant green eyes…that were unnervingly close to his face.

He jumped up with a shout and scuttled back, panting from the sudden adrenaline response. As he calmed himself down, he realized two things: one, he was no longer at the Thread of Hope, and two, those eyes belonged to neither Po nor Oogway.

"First of all," he gasped. "Please don't do that again. And I mean that in the most respectful way, Mrs. Jiao."

"That's _Ming Hua_," the spectral tigress corrected. "Your mother knew me too well to have her son call me 'Mrs. Jiao'." And she had a point. Nevertheless, Jiao Ming Hua stood before him as a ghostly visitation, garbed in white, her maternal gaze watching over him. Unlike the first time he had seen her, following her eldest son's death, she looked neither happy nor tranquil, if her fretful expression was any indication.

Tai Lung looked about, finding himself in the now-familiar Spectral Plane, the link between the mortal and spirit worlds. Much like earlier occurrences through meditation (and his own near-death experience), he was in an eternally green version of Wudan Mountain, though currently the sky was as dark as the one his body currently slept under…but none of this settled his unease. Ming Hua's visible agitation didn't help. Sensing that her years married to Shen were a touchy issue, he quickly changed the subject. "Well, I've been here enough through meditation to know I'm not dead, so what am I doing here? And where is Oogway? And my mum?"

"Oogway can no longer appear to you, Tai Lung," the feline spirit said, "The greater spirits have assigned him to Po. As for your mother…" she paused. "She is otherwise occupied."

He processed this information, feeling slightly depressed that he couldn't see her—and had not seen her for a good few months, actually—yet he smiled hopefully, instantly assuming, "She's watching over Mei Xing, isn't she?"

"Something like that, yes…" she said haltingly. "But that is not why I'm here. You are in grave danger."

"Is this a thing with spirits, telling mortals that 'we are all going to die'?"

"_Eventually_," she frowned, rolling her eyes in a way Tai Lung had only seen Dalang execute. "But this is not an existential crisis, Tai Lung. Believe me when I say you are in _very real_ danger, you, Po, and my son."

"What, Dalang?" he shakily stood. "This has something to do with this bloke we're going out to fight?"

She frowned, appearing conflicted. "I cannot tell you what you should do; I can only offer my recommendation. If you mean to fight this creature outright, he'll most surely kill you! Believe me when I say that even my husband was scared of him. Tai Lung, you must understand," she said, drawing closer to peer into his face. "Shen feared no man, in the entire course of our marriage…except one. This man that is after you—all three of you—is the only man he ever truly feared."

"I got that much," the snow leopard nodded. "Po mentioned something from his vision that Shen tried to kill this fellow."

"And with good reason," Ming Hua emphasized. "That's why I came here, to warn you about A—" but her voice failed her. Her lips moved, but no sound came from her mouth. Realizing this, she sighed and tried to say the name again. Once again, her voice refused to work, despite her best efforts. She pursed her lips and sighed. "Well, it looks like my _editors,_" she said shortly, sending a nasty look skyward, "won't let me tell you after all. Oogway was right—we aren't at liberty to tell you his name."

"Bugger, that," he said.

"It is, isn't it?" She paused, cocking her head to the side, as if listening to someone whispering in her ear. Then her yellow-green eyes flicked back over to him. "I can tell you his species."

He paused. "Well, that's a start…"

"He is a leopard."

"…Like me?"

"No, an Amur leopard, with golden fur, not silver, and blue-green eyes, but that is all the laws of this realm will allow me to say. Aside from that, is this warning," she pointed up to the sky. "Keep your eyes on the stars, Tai Lung. When the Red Star reaches the Rooster, the time of battle and bloodshed will soon follow."

Before his eyes, he witnessed the heavens shift, to the very celestial event he was to watch for. Indeed, the Red Star sparkled significantly like a bright ruby embedded on a black velvet cloak, surrounded by the diamond constellation of the Rooster. "How long do I have?"

"Two months," Ming Hua replied. "My best advice—which you may either take, or ignore—is to go to the Phoenix Temple with Po, and stay there until you have learned what you need to learn, however long that takes. Po needs the instruction of the Master there, and so do you."

"But I've mastered the Thousand Scrolls of Kung Fu," he said, confused. "What can this old master teach me?"

"He will teach you lessons that every man should learn."

"…Could you be a _bit_ more specific?"

Ming Hua looked upward, but at what, he couldn't say; he saw nothing, but perhaps there was an invisible spirit up there, watching her…and if his assumption was correct, that hidden force was keeping her from revealing too much. "I cannot stay any longer," she said, conceding to her own limitations as a ghost, "Nor can I say much more. I must restate: this leopard is dangerous, incredibly so. He may be old, but he is crueler than any enemy China has seen in centuries. What makes him dangerous is not ambition, nor pride, nor money."

"So what is he motivated by?"

She looked up again, then turned back to him with a sorrowful look. "Some men have no motivation for evil. This man is one of them; he has no morals, knows no mercy, and makes barbarians look as civilized as you or I. The only way to defeat him is to _become_ him." She let this sink in, then quickly added, "You must go to the Phoenix Temple. The old master will give you the tools you need to defeat your enemy, and the guidance to assume your destiny. Yes I _know_!" she snapped, and it took the snow leopard a moment to realize she was speaking to her invisible chaperone. She quickly added, "You have two months. Two months, and that's it. If you are not ready by then…" she paused, the slowly began fading away. "…Then may Heaven have mercy on your souls."

Tai Lung opened his eyes and sat up, rolling over to look at Po. The panda was nearly dozing, but perked up when he saw the snow leopard awake.

"You okay, buddy?" he asked.

"Fine," he lied. "I think it's about time for my watch."

"It's only been a couple hours," Po pointed out.

"You need more sleep than I do," Tai Lung said, standing and brushing off the seat of his pants. "I'll take watch for the rest of the night." While Po silently complied, laying himself down with his back to the small fire, Tai Lung settled himself for a few hours of watch.

Truth be told, he didn't think he could sleep even if he wanted to. Ming Hua's visitation in his dream had to be significant, he knew that. Spirits did not enter mortals' dreams unless to haunt them, or to give them a warning. Well, Dalang's mother certainly seemed nice enough, so that left out the first guess.

But this warning filled him with dread. It led to more questions than answers. All he knew was the creature's species and slight appearance. He knew he was an older man, older than Jiao Shen, perhaps, and someone very cruel, and perhaps very strong. The scoffing thought came to the forefront of his mind: _how strong could an old man be_? Well, if Shen was any suggestion…he could be pretty damn strong.

More puzzling was the apparent assignment of Oogway to Po and—evidently—Ming Hua to himself. He wasn't aware that certain spirit guides could be assigned as guardians to specific individuals…not that he was complaining. Still, as vague as the old tortoise was, he couldn't deny that his presence, even in spectral form, was comforting. But what he appreciated about Ming Hua was that she, like her only surviving son, got straight to the point. She even attempted to impart the name of their enemy. It was disappointing that she was not able to do so, but he appreciated the gesture all the same.

But now he had no choice but to be resolute in his decision. His plan of simply crossing the bridge to ensure Po made it safely across was not going to end there. Instead of being gone a few days, he would be gone from home much longer. Perhaps Mei Xing knew—or expected—this would happen; Sonam certainly had. The only one who was unsure of what his final decision would be was Tai Lung himself. And it appeared it was out of his hands; if Heaven, the gods, or whoever was up there had all but commanded him to go, he really had no choice. He recalled an old saying Oogway was fond of: "One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it". So even if he avoided it…it would happen anyway. There was no sense in fighting it, much to his vexation.

The snow leopard crossed his arms and scanned the trees with a steady eye, his ears ticking up at the slightest sound. He didn't need to be on such high alert, because the rest of the night passed uneventfully, and dawn came tranquilly, the sun bathing the earth in warm golden glow.

He got up to wake the snoring panda. It was a good day for a trek across the bridge, but if they dallied, there was no way they would reach the other side by nightfall.

* * *

Shifu, meanwhile, was occupying himself with a meal from the Long and Feng Café. Po and Tai Lung had been gone for three days. The red panda's students were busy teaching classes up at the Jade Palace, which made meditation nigh impossible what with all the noise, and Wu Lien was conducting her own classes for the whole day. So short of spending a good twelve hours or so doing nothing but playing his flute and reading, the red panda needed something to occupy himself with, or he'd go mad.

There was a scant crowd at the restaurant that crisp morning, where a thinning fog had settled over the bare fields and skirted between trees and walls, but he didn't mind. He sampled Dalang's apple dim sum special, finding it delightfully steaming and spicy, added with the spiced cider and sweet breakfast congee made by Su Lin. Keeping him company was Mei Xing, who had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders to fight off the morning chill, and was enjoying some cider with him. She had the ledger book open in front of her, and was going over the figures once more, as she usually did first thing in the morning.

"How are things?" he finally asked.

"Well enough," she answered, ticking away at the abacus and writing everything down. "Business is staying strong. By Moon Festival, we should be pretty flush…"

"No, I mean, your pregnancy, how is it?"

She glanced up at him and sighed, running her hand over her stomach. "So far, so good." She sighed and looked at the moon gate, rubbing her belly in a reassuring way, though it was clear it wasn't just the child she was comforting.

Shifu lowered his ears; he knew this had to be hard. He had never been in her position, and hoped never to be. Since getting married and having Wu Lien as a near-constant companion, he couldn't imagine him leaving her either, or vice versa. "I'm sorry."

She seemed to know exactly what he meant. "Its silly, I know…but I keep looking at that doorway, expecting him to walk through it and go on business as usual, you know? Its…it's strange not having him around."

"He will be back," Shifu told her. "I know him; he won't stay away long."

"The way is dangerous," she said, eyes still trained on the door.

"He will be fine," the red panda repeated. He reached over and patted her hand. "He's survived worse. He will come back to you, I can guarantee that."

"He won't be back in a few days," she said with conviction. "I can tell. Po means a lot to him; he was his first real friend after prison. He's going to that temple, I know it. If it were me and Su, I wouldn't let her go alone either, baby or no baby."

"But a man's duty is to his family." And that statement alone made him feel sick. He had sent his former ward on a dangerous mission, when his beloved wife was in desperate need of his company. Having Sonam around helped, but the old snow leopard was far from being as helpful or affectionate as Tai Lung could be.

As if following a silent cue, Sonam himself appeared, sitting next to the red panda and cheekily stealing an apple dumpling from the master's plate. Shifu scowled and batted the snow leopard's paw away. "Get your own breakfast!"

"I did," the blacksmith said whilst chewing. "Still hungry."

"I don't care," the red panda stated. "I paid for this meal, and I suggest you do the same."

"Guys, please," Mei Xing begged. "It's too early for a fight."

"This isn't a fight—its harmless ribbing, right old rat?" Sonam smirked.

"We've been over this, _cat_," Shifu frowned. "I am a _red panda_!"

"Not with that snout you're not!"

Mei Xing sighed and went back to focusing on the ledger. She was glad Sonam was there, really, but the old male's idea of humor left much to be desired. More to it than that, his manner toward her was confusing at best. Sometimes he lavished attention on her, made sure she was comfortable, well-fed, and well-rested, but other times he was unnervingly distant. They seemed to have an unspoken agreement; if neither felt like talking, the other wouldn't press the issue. The past couple nights since Tai Lung's departure, it wasn't unusual for the old cat and his daughter-in-law to sit in the common room, engrossed in their respective activities, but not speaking a word to each other the whole evening.

That was fine by her; she didn't know any other way. Life with her family had been much the same. The men and women wouldn't mingle, except at meals. When her brothers reached five years of age, they left her mother to work with her father and uncles in the fields, while she and her sisters stayed with their mother and learned sewing, embroidery, cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, all the things women were expected to know before they became wives and mothers. And when she had married the Headman—or, as Tai Lung called him, 'The Bastard'—he had largely left her alone, except for in their marital chamber, or when she ran into him in the hallways of his large house.

She was the second wife; the Headman's first wife had died young, under "mysterious circumstances", and there were rumors surrounding her death. No one knew the truth, because the poor girl was hardly ever seen outside the house. Some said she caught fever, others said she died in childbirth, still others surmised she had always been a melancholy creature and poisoned herself, and by far the most insidious rumor…that she had been murdered. Considering her personal experience, Mei Xing was comfortable betting money on the latter.

Those rumors persisted, though no one ever accused the Headman of such cruelty, perhaps out of fear of his power and influential wealth. Money may not buy happiness, but it could apparently buy everything else. The Honored Grandmother had never said anything to confirm or deny those rumors, perhaps to save her granddaughter-in-law's sanity. She'd been such a nice woman…how her son and grandson could have turned out to be such cads, Mei Xing would never know. The old woman had died a year before Mei Xing had run away, having outlived all her sons and most of her grandchildren (many of whom had died in a typhus epidemic the year before that), leaving only Mei Xing's mother-in-law and the Headman as her family. Neither of the aforementioned in-laws properly mourned the old woman's passing, but Mei Xing did. She was despondent, visibly mourning for months, and in so doing, earned the respect of many villagers for her devotion to the matriarch.

She hated that standard—were daughters-in-law not expected to truly love their adopted families? True, she had little love for her mother-in-law, and even less love for her husband, but Grandmother was by far the kindest mother figure she had ever known…until she met Aunt Wu, of course.

The female snow leopard set her ink brush down and followed her memories as they led her from her distant past to the present: Auntie had been her saving grace, and Mei Xing didn't know how much longer she would have lived if Wu Lien hadn't brought her into her home. Su Lin, without a doubt, was by far the sweetest and most gentle person Mei Xing had ever known, and Dalang was the kindest any man had ever been to her. Even the neighbor who had saved her life after her last beating had not been as accommodating as the male Amur tiger. It didn't take too long to ally herself with this unorthodox family, and not much longer until she saw Su Lin as a close sister, and Dalang as a protective brother.

Then Tai Lung had shown up.

In hindsight, Mei Xing kicked herself for not realizing sooner that he had been there for a year. She knew Wu kept many secrets, but didn't know how _well_ she kept those secrets. How she could not have known of the ex-convict's presence in that house astounded many people, particularly Tigress; the short-lived "Aunt Wu's Dim Sum and Then Some" wasn't a particularly large building. In her defense, Mei Xing was not the most perceptive at the time. Tai Lung had been found before Wu Lien had found _her_, and for months after, the female snow leopard had been confined to her bed during her recovery. When she finally emerged to begin working in the restaurant, Wu, Dalang, and Su Lin informed her that she may use any room in the house, but never to open "the first door on the left, at the top of the stairs". If that was the only condition to living there in relative freedom, she didn't care. She wasn't being threatened, or beaten, or treated like a slave, so if all she had to do was to never go into _one_ lousy room…she was okay with that.

She hadn't been thinking that night, when she discovered Tai Lung in that room. She had been distracted, but she recognized him from descriptions she heard in the village. She thought she had been safe in Aunt Wu's. Seeing him there threatened that safety. If attention was ever drawn to them because of him, she would have been cast out, imprisoned, and no doubt her first husband would have discovered where she was…and at that point, being executed for harboring such a dangerous fugitive, or spending the rest of her life in prison were both more appealing alternatives.

That said, she really didn't want to hurt him, and truly didn't mean to stab him the night he'd snuck into her room…well, she didn't intend to stab _Tai Lung, _at any rate. She'd been telling the truth: she thought the Headman had found her and meant to kill her. She knew killing him in self defense was a guaranteed death sentence, but she'd rather go out by the executioner's sword than die by the hands of the man who had terrorized her for ten years.

More to her surprise, after finding Tai Lung in her room instead of the Headman, was that the warrior was astoundingly forgiving about the incident. She still had the drawing he'd made for her as an apology for hitting her: it was safely nestled away between spare quilts in her wedding chest; she'd even had it framed, and intended to hang it in the nursery once it was completed.

After that, Tai Lung and Po had started training her in kung fu; Tai Lung never said why, but she had her suspicions. Despite her initial misgivings toward the odd offer, she was grateful for his intervention. Due to his training regimen, she became stronger than she had ever been, healthier, happier…and his means of encouragement—though forced, at first—were certainly more than she had ever gotten before. For the first time, she was good at something and someone—a _man_, no less—complimented her on it.

By then, she had started noticing a change not just in him, but in herself, a realization of odd feelings she had never known before. It didn't occur to her until the day they shared their deepest secrets that she was falling in love with him. Despite her fears, despite her (apparent) marital status, she was falling in love with a dangerous man, a man with a checkered past, a man…who loved her back. Was there really any other explanation? He had defended her honor, saved her life, and ensured her freedom after baring his soul to her, and all in the same day. The change in their relationship dynamic was so drastic, it should have given her whiplash; in hindsight, it didn't matter. Those trysts they shared for months before their marriage meant something more than simple animal attraction; there was something deeper there, something sacred. By the New Year Festival of that year, neither could deny their feelings any longer. They got married five months later, and found out she was expecting three months after that.

She ran her hand over her round stomach, feeling the baby's comforting movements. Her pregnancy was much better than her previous ones; her first had produced a stillborn girl, and the others never made it past the fourth month or so; even with the herbs she took to curb it, she doubted those pregnancies would have lasted anyway, what with her frequent beatings. It didn't help that her ex-husband's family overstressed her, or that food and sleep were sometimes denied; the rationale was that the Headman's first wife had made it through such trials, which meant Mei Xing was "weak". She never bothered to point out that the Headman's first wife had also left him childless.

Wu Lien had changed all that. The female snow leopard's health had been the red panda woman's primary concern since they had met, and as soon as Mei Xing had found out she and Tai Lung were expecting a baby, Wu started her on vitamins, extra food, plenty of rest, and some very light exercise. The kung fu that Mei had learned helped, too. It wasn't until very recently that she suffered from fatigue, which had plagued her in previous pregnancies. When that had started, Tai Lung all but forced her to rest whenever she felt tired…a complete turnaround from her first marriage. Since the sixth month, _he_ was the one who cooked, _he_ was the one who did laundry, _he_ was the one who cleaned, and not her. And she wasn't sure if she was comfortable with that.

"You need to rest, love?"

"Huh?" she shook herself out of her reverie. "Sorry?"

"Do you need to rest?" Sonam asked again. "You put down your brush and were staring into space."

"Oh…that's right," she said absently. "No, I don't think so. I just have a lot on my mind right now."

"Alright…" her father-in-law sounded unconvinced. "But you feel the slightest bit faint, you tell me, right?"

She nodded. "I'm fine right now…though I am a little hungry."

The male snow leopard stood quickly, not giving her a chance to object. "I'll grab ye something; Ping might have some noodles ready for the lunch crowd."

Mei Xing watched him walk over to the counter, a baffled expression on her face. She looked back at Shifu when he cleared his throat. She found herself apologizing, "Sorry…I'm just not used to this kind of treatment. I'm used to serving others, not myself. I feel kind of selfish…"

"Don't," he said curtly, almost an order as he sipped his cider, offering more to her. "This is not the kind of family who would expect you to overtax yourself. A child is a blessing, and ensuring its health _and_ yours is more important than any work the mother 'ought' to be doing. Relax—until the child is born, you're off the hook."

Unexpectedly, and against her will, old feelings flared up concerning Shifu's comments. The intellectual side of her knew he meant nothing negative by it, but she felt it anyway. His words were meant to be encouraging, even if the tone was incredibly curt. She knew those tones of voice quite well; her ex had used them to invalidate her, to break her will. For ten years, her opinions and troubles were dismissed, demeaned, ignored, and denigrated until her spirit was finally broken, like a vase shattered on the floor. Like the Legendary Urn of Whispering Warriors, she was glued back together now, but the cracks were still there.

Her eyes welled with tears, and she blinked several times to dispel them. _Get a hold of yourself. You're not back there. This is a different marriage, a different family, a different life!_ So why couldn't she get over it? When Sonam returned with her soup, she pushed the ledger away and huddled over the bowl, deeply inhaling the briny aroma and letting the heat soothe her nerves.

CRASH!

She and the two old males jumped when they heard the tremendous clamor of shattering porcelain from the kitchen, Shifu jumping up and immediately running to the door. "Ping!" he called. "Ping! What happened?"

The goose quickly appeared at the counter, waving his wings consolingly. "It's all right, everyone—just dropped a few bowls. No harm done, just a bit of a mess! It's okay—go back to your noodles. Everything is fine!" Then he disappeared into the kitchen as quickly as he had appeared at the counter.

Shifu stared after the goose, flummoxed, and wondered aloud to his companions, "…Since when does _Ping_ drop anything?"

* * *

Mr. Ping shuffled into the back storeroom and closed the door, leaving it cracked open as he stepped over the pile of broken noodle bowls. Then he turned to the still figure who still clutched the now-empty tray in her nerveless, shaking hands, whose wide brown eyes had taken on a catatonic sheen.

"Su Lin," the goose shushed, "Come on, dear, sit, sit…it was an accident, and accidents happen. No sense crying over spilled noodles!"

Su Lin looked at him silently, wordlessly allowing him to escort her to a few sacks of flour to sit on. His wing patting her on the back, he gently urged, "Just breathe, Su Lin; you're having a panic attack, but it's all right. Just breathe."

The tears finally spilled over and she began to cry, hard, dropping the tray to the floor and hiding her face in her hands. Mr. Ping sighed and patted her back again, "It's all right, listen, it's all right. They're just bowls! I can always get more. What with all that this restaurant makes, its no trouble whatsoever. Besides, those bowls were pretty old; makes sense to 'upgrade' as Dalang says…"

"I…" she sobbed, her body quaking with her crying, "I'm sorry…I don't know what's wrong with me! I just can't get it together; it feels like I'm a hundred miles away. I keep screwing up! I can't get orders right, and when I do, I give them to the wrong people; I drop things all over the place, I get in people's way…how can you even put up with me?! I'm a disgrace!"

"Now you stop that right now," he said sternly…or as sternly as Mr. Ping could get. "You are _not_ a disgrace, young lady. You are just having a bad day. A bad few days…well, either way, you're in a rut. It happens to the best of us."

Still she cried, and Ping was at a loss. He had no experience with this sort of thing. He'd grown up among men, had many brothers, and had only had one son…so, like most men, the intricacies of the female mind were foreign to him. The best way—and only way—he knew to make people feel better was to offer the simplest pleasure of all: good food. If only he'd known how that habit would affect his son later in life… And unfortunately, food was probably the last thing on Su Lin's mind.

"You're just having a bad day," he repeated. "Why don't you take the rest of the day off?"

"But it's so early…" she sniffed. "And you need help around here…"

He waved this off. "It's the middle of the week, so it should be quiet. I have Dalang here, and that should be enough." He tried offering her a sympathetic and hopeful smile, but it died on his beak when he saw just how forlorn she was. Parental instinct told him what was wrong. "He won't be gone long," he soothed. "My Po wouldn't just leave and never come back—he loves this Valley too much!"

Su Lin just hugged herself, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Her brown eyes settled on the heap of porcelain shards in the doorway and let out another sob. "I-I…I'm sorry about your bowls…"

Ping gave her a concerned look, "I know, dear. You said that already." Forcefully brightening up, he nudged her to stand, "Why don't you go out into the market today? It's a beautiful day! A little fresh air, some exercise, perhaps to fill up your herbs for your side business? I know you said you needed mint and acacia, and ginger root…and you can look at the new fabric they've got—they're having a sale, I believe. This is the perfect opportunity!"

She sniffed, taking deep breaths to calm herself. She forced herself not to look at the broken dishes, but couldn't look at Ping either. "I…I _guess_ I have enough money for what I need…"

"Better yet," he said, waddling over to the wall, where a massive chest sat in the corner. He unlocked the chest and opened the lid, taking out a bag of coins. "Here you are! An advance on your pay."

"Mr. Ping," she protested, "I can't take this…"

"That's too bad, because as your boss, I _order_ you to take it," he cheekily replied, "and I order you to turn your _bad_ day into a _good_ day." Now, he finally got the smile he wanted to see from her. "There now, that's much better! Go enjoy your day. Maybe Mei Xing would like to come with you…I know how much she hates being cooped up."

"Her doctor and Auntie wouldn't like it," the female panda said, timidly accepting the money.

Mr. Ping waved it off. "Bah! A short walk around the block won't hurt her! And if she gets tired, she can find someplace to sit."

"Maybe Mr. Sonam might come too," she added.

"A fine idea," he said, reaching for a broom and dustpan. "I'll clean up here. Go wash your face, dry up those tears... Now that I think of it, maybe all three of you could use the distraction…"

Truth be told, Ping felt he needed the distraction, too. As Su Lin slowly ascended the stairs to her room, the goose sighed and began picking up the broken bowls. Thank heaven for this business! Without it, without work, he didn't know how he'd handle this anxiety; his son had never left the Valley before, and though the goose trusted Tai Lung to keep Po safe, that didn't ease his fears.

Ping, too, had once left the Valley of Peace, "when he was young and crazy" as he had told Po…with heavy emphasis on "crazy". He'd been such a fool to leave! He too had been born in this valley, in this village, in this very house, and learned the hard way how dangerous the rest of the Empire could be. And he guessed—probably correctly—that little had changed in thirty years…

Dumping the shards in the refuse pile out back, Mr. Ping returned to the main kitchen and set another pot to boil for his Secret Ingredient Soup. He noticed Dalang chopping vegetables with a stiff back and twitching whiskers, clear evidence of his own anxiety…though that was probably from the tenseness in his marriage of late. Through the open window, the goose saw Su Lin, Mei Xing and Sonam leaving through the moon gate and turn left towards the marketplace, leaving Shifu to sit alone, sipping his cooling cider. No matter what, everyone seemed anxious today.

Yes, thank heaven for work, for any distraction whatsoever.

* * *

Miles away, at the entrance of the Thread of Hope, Tai Lung and Po looked out over the spans and rickety bridges with mixed calm and trepidation.

"I have to be out of my mind," Po said warily.

Tai Lung shouldered his pack and grunted as he cracked his back. "It won't be so bad…just hold fast to the ropes, and don't look down." He turned to the panda and frowned. "What did I say about looking down?"

"I don't think I can do this…" Po said waveringly.

"Po," the snow leopard curtly said, "You rushed headlong into battle against _me_, then took on _Jiao Shen_ a year later, not to mention the bandits last year, and the assassins a few months after that. Crossing this bridge will be child's play compared to all that."

Po looked out over the ledge, squinting as he tried to ascertain the length of the span. The spans between the rock spires eventually disappeared into the clouds and fog that were slowly fading with the rising sun. He wasn't sure if he should be glad or nervous that the mists hid the bottom of the Devil's Mouth from view.

"So how long is it?" he asked.

Tai Lung turned to give him an odd look, "That's a rather personal question…"

"The BRIDGE, Tai Lung," Po snapped. "How long is the _bridge_?"

"_Oh_…" the snow leopard sighed with relief, laughing uncomfortably. "Sorry, for a minute there I thought this was going to be some of that 'male bonding' your father was talking about."

Po scowled. "Please don't use the words 'my dad' and 'male bonding' in the same sentence _ever_ again. Now, how long is it?"

"We're still talking about the bridge, right?"

"TAI!"

"A few miles, Panda, it's a few more miles. Bloody hell, can't take a rutting joke…" With that, the snow leopard boldly took the first steps onto the newly-constructed first span, confident in the fresh wooden boards. What worried him were the older planks near the middle. The last one, the final link to the other side, was more recent, courtesy of Jiao Shang's escape from his callous father. _I salute you, my good man._ "Come on, panda, best be off. We want to reach the other side by nightfall…"

But Po hesitated, swallowing hard. He had a newfound appreciation for his ancestors, and all the residents of the Valley, who had at some point or another crossed this very bridge. "Thread of Hope" was a very astute name…the term 'hanging by a thread' certainly came to mind, and all negative connotations thereof.

Po kept a white-knuckled grip on the ropes, setting his jaw painfully as his heart rate spiked. Even by taking his friend's advice by staring straight ahead gave him a profound experience of vertigo; he dared not look down into the mists, even if the buffeting winds that whipped at his clothes made him freeze in his tracks.

Tai Lung, however, was yards ahead of him, holding on to the ropes with a light grip, his fingers barely touching the flimsy barriers between him and what was sure to be a fatal fall into oblivion. Po envied the snow leopard's nonchalance, and his lack of acrophobia, but more so resented his friend's superior strength lest the winds throw him off the bridge entirely.

Po's greater worry was how his own weight would affect his journey across the spans to the other side, which was hidden behind the mists that still blocked his view of the mainland. If he could break a floorboard in the dormitory, the boards beneath his feet would result in something much, much worse…

Somehow, he made it to the first spire, finding it hard to breathe from the altitude, but also from his rising panic attack. Tai Lung, who had made it across with nary a care, watched his friend worriedly as the panda wheezed, pressing his hand over his heart.

"Po…" he said, "Are you alright?"

The panda answered him by hunching over and vomiting. Tai Lung made a face and backed away as Po coughed and shuddered, his face an unhealthy mix of green and grey. The snow leopard sighed, "There's no reason to get so worked up about it…"

"I really don't think I can do this…" Po said weakly.

"Remember what I said before we started?" the feline asked. "Think of this as another battle, only this one is much easier to win." He was trying to be helpful, but even he had to admit that he had his own trepidation crossing this bridge. The winds were much stronger than the day he fought the Furious Five, but he wasn't about to say that to the acrophobic panda. Any show of bravado, he reasoned, would surely encourage his friend to make the crossing with limited anxiety…but if the sudden physical sickness was any indication, that anxiety was worse than the snow leopard could have predicted.

"How about this," he suggested, "You go first, and I'll come up behind you. It'll encourage you along, and if something happens—which it _won't_—I'll be right there if you need help. Sound fair?"

Po closed his eyes and sat down, trying to control his breathing and rapid heartbeat. "I…I guess I got no choice, right? Gotta cross this bridge sometime…"

"That's right, you do. No sense delaying the inevitable." Tai Lung offered his friend his canteen, which Po sipped from; from a small medicinal bag, the snow leopard produced a bag of candied ginger, which he handed off to the grateful bear. "We'll rest a bit, but we can't tarry long. You settle your stomach; I'll look over the map. As soon as we get to the other side, we'll need to find someplace safe to camp."

"Aren't there bandits right there, at the other side of the gorge?"

"Yes, but this bridge is patrolled by the Crane clan, and is guarded on the other side by Imperial Scouts—and word I hear is that most bandit activity has dropped off since the beat those wolves back a year ago." Tai Lung sat cross-legged and pulled the map out of his pocket, spreading it out on the ground. He used rocks to hold the corners down, lest a stray breeze blow it away. While Po recovered, the spotted feline ran his claw over the red ink line that marked the road they were to take.

As far as a route, it was pretty straightforward. After crossing the gorge, they would cross the border into the Guizhou Province, then cross the border into the newly renamed Yunnan (formerly "Dian Province", before the new governor had taken office), and follow the trail called the Bing Yuan Road—the Soldier's Road—which led along Sichuan's southern border, in the foothills of mountains. Then they would quickly pass through Northwestern Yunnan before reaching the border of Tibet. Their destination was at the top of a mountain, just over the border into the Tibetan Autonomous region.

He frowned, stroking his whiskers as he thought. The majority of the trip would take them through mountains, with exception to the trail running along the Yunnan-Sichuan border. Compared to Guizhou, Yunnan would be a cakewalk, but that didn't make it easy. As he thought this, he remembered that his wife was from Yunnan…and in order to make to Hunan, she had to cross the same mountains he would be crossing soon…while she was starving, exhausted, and terrified for her life. It broke his heart to think of it, but perhaps he would come to respect her more for her tenacity.

Po cleared his throat, bringing the snow leopard back to the present. The color had more or less returned to the panda's face. "How's the path look?" he asked.

Tai Lung sighed, "Arduous, but doable."

Po looked over his shoulder at the map. "Looks like a lot of mountains…" he paused. "I guess if we're _going_ to a mountain, this oughta be good practice, right?"

The snow leopard smiled at his friend's positive spin, and rolled up the map. "Quite. Think you're ready?"

The hopeful smile died on his lips as the panda looked over the next span…and at the other bridges before them that disappeared into the horizon. Po sighed and shakily stood. "Ready as I'm gonna be…"

* * *

Mr. Ping had been right about the market. Su Lin felt much better being out in the sun and fresh air, and not stuck behind the restaurant's walls. There were too many things there that reminded her of Po, and thinking of him leaving so suddenly hurt more than she could have ever expected. She loved him, true, but did he love her back? His running away to Tibet—along such a dangerous route—said more than words ever would. He was mad at her—had to be—otherwise why would he leave like that? Why would he go on such a long and dangerous journey?

The female panda found it difficult, for the first time in her life, to look on the bright side. Dalang had mentioned something about a kung fu master who could teach Po new moves, expand his abilities, perhaps help him lose weight. This distressed her—she _loved_ him, just the way he was! How could he not see that? Sure, he was big, but most pandas were. In fact, she thought with a smile, his portly physique reminded her of the Laughing Buddha. She would never tell him, but sometimes she wanted to rub his belly, as if doing so would bring her good luck…and this thought alone made her giggle.

"Nice to see you smiling again, love," Sonam remarked. "Thought with your lover gone, you'd sink into despair…"

"Sonam!" Mei Xing scolded, jabbing his ribs with her elbow. "Give her some time!"

"What? I'm just stating a fact!"

Mei Xing sent him a sharp look and stepped up her pace. Catching up with the female panda, they hooked their arms together to walk together. "Don't listen to him," the female feline said. "He's just being a grump puss this morning."

"Its okay, I don't mind," Su Lin said. "He's right though…I feel so lost without Po…"

"And that's what bothers me," Mei Xing confessed. "I've never seen you like this."

"I know…" she sighed, despondent. "I know that Tigress thinks I'm overreacting. Auntie hasn't said so, but I know she's thinking it."

"They're worried because they care," Mei Xing said. "And I'm worried because _I_ care. Su, don't throw yourself away like this, it's not like you. I'm serious—this isn't good for your health."

"_You're_ worried about Tai Lung," the female panda said. "How come you're not…"

"How come I'm not crying my eyes out every night?" she answered bluntly.

Su Lin flushed, staring at the ground. She heard her friend sigh. "Su, I have faith in my husband. Yes, I'm worried, but I can't let it get to me; I've got too many other things to worry about. I accepted a long time ago that I won't always come first, no matter what my position in his life. Besides, I know his destiny is important; I'm not resentful that he left to seek it out. I _will_ be resentful if he doesn't come back." She paused, "But I know he'd never do that to me. And Po would never do that to _you_. He loves you too much."

"I don't think that's true anymore…" Su Lin said, then realized far too late she had said too much. Mei Xing's silence told her that her friend was, if not shocked, at the very least concerned.

"What makes you say that?"

Su Lin looked over her shoulder, back at Sonam, who had respectfully fallen a good five paces behind the females to allow them some privacy. Catching the panda's look, the scarred old snow leopard fell back even further, feigning keen interest in a stall of decorations for the upcoming Moon Festival. The female panda then took Mei Xing aside to a secluded corner where she confessed,

"The night before he left, we had a date, and while we were alone…" she paused, biting her lip. Mei Xing was listening raptly, giving her friend her full attention.

"Yes…?"

"We…I…" the panda squirmed in discomfort. "I…I thought we could…would…you know…should do it."

"Do what?" Then it sunk in, her amber eyes widening. "Wait…do _it_? You were going to…?"

"No, we didn't," the panda sighed, frustrated tears forming in her big brown eyes. "I chickened out—I just wanted to show him how much I loved him, and at the last minute, I thought about Mama, and I knew she wouldn't be proud of me taking a man to my bed before I was married. I thought…I mean, she would think…if I knew a man before I was even engaged, that would make me a…a…"

"A harlot?" the snow leopard said with a raised brow. Su Lin guiltily looked up at her friend…and realized the implication the snow leopardess had taken.

"Oh, Mei! I didn't mean that you—"

"No, no, it's okay. I've heard similar sentiments from the villagers," the feline said, casting a sharp glance at the general crowd. "Its common knowledge I was divorced, and apparently a divorced woman who remarries while her ex-husband is still alive is automatically a harlot." She giggled, "Doesn't bother me anymore, because I know if they ever said that in front of my Tai-Tai, he'd put them in the ground."

Su Lin cracked a smile, knowing that statement was all too true. Then she sighed again. "But I know that's why Po really left…I pushed him away, and he looked so mad at me! Not that I blame him…what with me leading him on like that. But if I had given in anyway, there's no doubt he would have lost all respect for me."

"That's not true and you know it!" Mei Xing hissed. "Po loves you, and sex isn't as big a deal as people make it out to be. Granted, it's nice—very nice—very, _very_ nice…" she imparted with reddened cheeks and a naughty smile, but quickly recovered, clearing her throat, "But it's not everything."

"But you and Tai, um…made love before you were married," Su Lin said with an innocent blush. "Many times, as I remember. Weren't you worried what people would think?"

Mei Xing thought about this. At the time, neither she nor Tai Lung really cared about it; it felt good, so they did it. That's how it was, at first…but the more time they spent together—outside the bedroom, of course—the less it seemed like empty copulation and more like they were sharing something together, that it was a connection. That it felt _right_. That night, that first time they lay together in each other's arms, Mei Xing had the feeling that they weren't doing it because of 'oh hey there's a battle tomorrow and this is our last chance'. They were doing it because each of them was missing something, and that act, that ancient, almost sacred dance, somehow gave them what they needed.

"Let me put it this way," the female snow leopard said. "For ten years, sex was never a pleasurable experience for me. The first time with Tai, I was a little scared because I thought it would hurt as much as it had before. But it didn't. He didn't hurt me…well, he _sort of_ hurt me, but not in a bad way."

"There's a _good_ way to get hurt?"

She smirked, "Oh yeah, there is. But Su, the thing you need to understand is…making love isn't just about making babies… It's the ultimate expression of love, and sometimes people don't use it right. The ones who do it without any emotional connection are the _real_ harlots, at least I think so."

"But what about your reputation?"

"I was already divorced, so who really cared?" she shrugged, putting her hands on her hips. "I was free to do what I wanted, damn the consequences. For the first time, I could do what I wanted without fear of being beaten or killed for it; I could _feel_ for the first time. I guess what I'm trying to say is…" she paused. "It meant freedom for me."

"…So what does that mean for me?" Su Lin wondered aloud.

"Do you love Po?"

"Of course I do!"

"And he obviously loves you."

"If you say so…"

"And I do. So you love each other, and probably want to get married eventually…so what's the problem?"

"It's just…well, its custom."

Mei Xing sighed. "Su, think about our friends, and ask yourself this question: since when has _anyone_ we know ever followed custom? Auntie, prime example; Tigress, _better_ example; Viper and Crane married outside their species; Shifu's training regimen is so scary not even the Imperial army is willing to use his methods; Monkey gave up working in his family business to follow his dream; Mantis is a bachelor for life…and I don't blame him; Dalang defied and abandoned his family to become a chef; and Sonam…" the feline looked over to where the old snow leopard was gazing disinterestedly at a recipe for mooncakes. "Well…enough said."

"I just want to make my family proud of me," Su Lin said softly.

"Su Lin, we _are_ proud of you."

The female panda paused, surprised by her surrogate sister's answer. It was silly, she knew, but she had never truly called Aunt Wu, Dalang or Mei Xing her "family". Su Lin's family all lay in a cemetery in Chengdu. That was how she had always seen it. Her family—her real family—was gone, and as the sole survivor, it was her responsibility to honor her family in this life so that they could be happy in their afterlife. She could not go to Chengdu to clean their graves at Ghost Festival or New Year's, but she left offerings for them all the same; in place of cleaning their graves, she cleared the final resting places of complete strangers who had no living relatives. She did absolutely anything to ensure her family was taken care of…but as the youngest daughter, the stress of that was perhaps too much. Society never expected her to fulfill such daunting responsibilities…and apparently neither did her "new family".

"Have you talked to Auntie about this?" asked Mei Xing.

The panda turned her big brown eyes back up to her. "No, I haven't."

"Maybe you should," the snow leopardess offered. "Catch her at lunchtime, ask her for advice. I know when something's bothering me she makes me feel better."

Su Lin nodded slowly and sighed, looking out at the market. Perhaps that would be a good idea. She had known Wu for a good half of her life, and the red panda was usually the voice of wisdom when she needed it most. When she felt Mei Xing's hand on her shoulder, she expected to be brought into a hug…only to find the snow leopardess looking very pale.

"Sorry," she said breathlessly, her eyes looking unfocused. "Just started feeling…really tired…"

Su Lin's instincts kicked into gear and her inner doctor took over. "Didn't you eat something before we left?!"

"I had a bowl of noodles. I thought I'd be fine…for a short walk…" She was breathless, looking paler by the minute, and the female panda knew at once that they had gone too far.

"Sonam!" Su Lin called. "Sonam, Mei needs to get home, now!"

The old male was by his daughter-in-law's side in a second, holding her up and letting her lean heavily on him as he turned back to the house. "Told you not to strain yourself, but will you listen?" he snapped. "I _knew_ we were going too far…when I tell you to let me know when you're feeling drained, I _mean_ it!"

Su Lin watched as the snow leopards walked back home, and in particular she watched the female with concern. That fatigue attack had happened far too quickly this time; luckily they weren't that far from the _Long and Feng_. She knew that Sonam wasn't truly mad—that was just how he showed concern. Mei Xing, of course, would take it all personally; Su Lin made a mental note to tell Auntie to visit the pregnant feline later.

Overriding the instinct to follow the cats back home, the female panda turned to continue her shopping. Sonam could handle getting Mei back safe, and if Shifu was still there, he could help too. Mei would be fine; all she needed was some rest and something to get her blood sugar up again. And anyone could treat her for that.

Besides, Mr. Ping had a good point: Su Lin needed to clear her head. As addled as her mind still was, she doubted she'd be able to give Mei Xing the treatment she deserved. Even as she carried on down the way, her mind was still in a fog, no matter how she tried to focus. _One thing at a time_, she told herself, _One thing at a time.

* * *

_

He made it across! One step at a time—slowly—but he had done it! Po collapsed to his knees and kissed the dirt as soon as they reached the other side of the gorge. "Whoever is up there, I love you all!" he prayed loudly, offering prayers to whatever deity had been kind enough to help him cross the bridge.

Tai Lung sighed and sent him a long-suffering look. "It wasn't that bad!"

"This coming from the guy who _isn't_ afraid of heights!" Po griped, kneeling on the ground.

"Are you going to be sick again?"

"Nah, I think I'm okay. That was really, _really_ rough…"

Tai Lung sighed and looked up the path ahead. The passage across the Thread of Hope had taken much longer than he had liked, and it was now nearly dusk. He knew that they needed to find shelter, or at the very least, a place that bandits could not ambush. It was foolish to continue down this mountain path in the darkness. Not only did they have mortal threats to worry about, he had a vague feeling Mother Nature was only beginning to toy with them.

"There's a guard tower up there," Po pointed out.

Tai Lung saw it, but felt dread filling his gut. Even though he'd been forgiven and pardoned in the Valley of Peace, that didn't mean the snow leopard was perfectly composed around lawmen and soldiers. The first time he had been through here, three years before, he had just gone right by with nary a care—he'd been so focused on his goal and had gone by so fast, the scouts barely saw him until he was halfway across the bridge. In recollection, perhaps that was for the best. _Let's face it, I'm not exactly Mr. Popularity_, he thought ruefully. But enough time had passed—three years was sufficient enough for his new reputation to spread past the bridge, right? Who knows, perhaps these guards were pleasant fellows.

This assumption would be the first of many incorrect hypotheses he would have over the course of that trip.

The rhino guards that Jiao Shen had murdered were replaced by two large bulls—bigger and beefier than him, to be frank—and neither looked kindly upon him. They were clearly of the same family, but were not twins. While they were cordial to Po—even reverent—they regarded the snow leopard with cautious, suspicious stares. They had likely been informed by their superiors—the Crane Clan—that the Master of the Thousand Scrolls was no longer a threat, but twenty years was long enough time for legends and fables to cloud their judgment of this man. Which meant that no matter how rude they were to him, Tai Lung had to be on his best behavior.

_Damn it._

"Tibet, huh?" the first bull asked. "Most folks going that way aren't pilgrims. Only merchants and outlaws go there…and I'm not sure which of the two is worse."

Tai Lung didn't like the look he was getting from him. "Believe what you want," the snow leopard said, "I'm not trading, or running from the law. I've been a good boy."

Po could feel the tenseness in the room and quickly changed the subject. "Has there been a lot of activity around here?"

"It's been pretty quiet," the second bull, and more amiable of the two, said. "Which usually means that they're regrouping. Lookin' at the logs," he said, thumbing over his shoulder at shelves of journals and ledgers, "Most baddies take a break until after Moon Festival. By winter's first snow, though, they've largely dropped off."

"I've heard the snows make them more desperate," Tai Lung said pointedly, accepting a cup of tea. The bulls weren't being nice about it—it was just a common courtesy they offered to those who had crossed the bridge. To those who were going to cross to get to the valley, the rule of thumb was to offer a shot of liquid courage…and a few prayers.

"Depends on how deep the snows get," the first bull said.

Po downed the green tea, grateful for its calming effects. Nodding to Tai Lung, they showed off the map they had been given to ask about the road ahead.

"You're taking the Bing Yuan Road?" the first asked incredulously. "Are you nuts? That's the worst path."

"What are you talking about?" Po asked. "It takes us right where we wanna be."

"I'm just saying…" the first bull said with a pointed look at Tai Lung. "You might want to consider a different path."

"Anything you have in mind?" the snow leopard asked, again not liking the looks he was getting.

"We don't, but you can ask at the Xiao Tou—"

"Don't tell them that, you fool!" the first bull chastised the second. "They'd get into even _more_ trouble there!"

"What's the Xiao Tou…whatever?" Po asked.

The second bull ignored his kin's reproving glare and answered, "It's a den of thieves and assassins. The Bing Yuan Road—the Soldier's Road—is crawling with Imperial ranks and other lawmen. Most people take that road because it's so secure."

"Are you encouraging us to take a smuggler's road to avoid the law?" Tai Lung asked with great curiosity.

"Well, actually, yes. This time of year, it gets really backed up. If you want to reach Tibet before the first snowfall, you might want to take a less congested route."

Po said, "So we just avoid the Bing Yuan Road—no big deal. There's gotta be other ways to get to the Phoenix Temple."

That was when both bovines burst out laughing. Panda and snow leopard shared a look, and both shrugged at the other. "What's so funny?" the panda asked.

"Are you serious? That place doesn't even exist!" the second bull laughed. "You gotta be out of your minds to go that far, at this time of year, to look for some fortress that isn't real!"

"But hey, if you wanna risk your necks for a stupid legend," the first bull snickered, "Be our guests."

Po saw his friend's face fall, and he quickly excused them. "We should probably be going. Thanks for the info. Oh, and where's this Xiao Tou Inn?"

The second bull pointed down the path. "About five miles down the road, and a mile north. It's sitting in the middle of this lake, in the valley of four mountains. It's called Lake Compass, because the mountains in the exact cardinal points. The place is marked by a bunch of red banners—you can't miss it."

"That will take us all night to get there," Tai Lung whispered to Po. "We still have to find some place to camp."

The first bull overheard him. "You could always ask Mrs. He; since her son got married, she's got that spare room."

Both panda and snow leopard blanched. They knew that name all too well, and remembered its bearer with even less affection. "You know, I think we'll take our chances with the road…" Tai Lung said.

"What's the matter?" the first bull mocked, "Afraid of her?"

"Uh, _yeah_," Po said. "You weren't at Master Crane's wedding—we were."

"Nothing against Master Crane's mother," Tai Lung covered. "But I'd rather not spend the evening listening to her insult her daughter-in-law's family."

"She won't be happy you passed through without saying hello," the second bovine said.

"She'd be less happy to hear us say nice things about Viper," Po muttered. If the bulls heard him, they probably didn't care. Taking that opportunity to bow and leave, Po and Tai Lung carried on down the road towards the Thieves' Inn.

"I don't like this idea," Tai Lung said. "Perhaps those guards are right about the Bing Yuan Road, but to take the same route as outlaws? That just screams 'shady'."

"Don't think about that, okay buddy?" Po said. "Maybe those guards had a point—sticking to back roads might be better, even quicker."

"I'm not sure I'd place all my trust in them."

"Well duh, but I mean…they gotta be telling the truth more than outlaws would, right?"

Tai Lung felt it best to hold his tongue on that matter.

* * *

Back in the guard tower, the second bull watched their retreating backs before turning to his kin. "Think they'll take the advice?"

The first bovine snorted. "If they don't, it's no skin off my nose."

"It _should_ be—if it weren't for Tai Lung, we wouldn't have this job. Had the Jiao taken over the Valley of Peace, we'd still be grunts hauling supplies all over the empire. At least this post has benefits." He paused, then looked back out the window, finding that the travelers had disappeared into the darkness. "Did those soldiers come around again?"

"Who, the captain and his goons? Yeah, but they'll be back later."

"It's weird, isn't it? It's like he's _expected_ them to leave all along. He's been hounding us for months, asking if we've seen Tai Lung leave."

"Not our problem."

"But are we going to tell him?"

"What, that they were here? I guess it would hurt us more to lie about it, wouldn't it?"

"I don't like it," the second bull said, hushing his tone as if the person they were speaking of could hear him. Sitting back at his desk he glanced over the open scroll he had purposefully hidden from the panda and snow leopard. Holding it up, he shook his head at the obscene sum printed beneath the picture on the scroll. "Ten thousand _yuan_…why the emperor raised the reward, I don't know. I mean, if Tai Lung defeated Jiao Shen, he can't be all bad."

"Doesn't excuse his crimes all those years back."

"But he went to prison for it, he served his time…"

"And killed a thousand of the emperor's men while breaking out of it; face it, he's rotten to the core, and if the Emperor wants ten thousand for him, dead or alive…" the first bull paused. "Shoulda just killed him while he was here. Sure, wouldn't get the bonus for bringing him in alive, but it would be a mercy to him. No telling what tortures he'd face before the execution."

The second bull shivered, rolled up the scroll and put it in a drawer with other wanted posters. After a pregnant pause, he looked over at his cousin to ask, "Since the Dragon Warrior's with him…do you think he's a target too?"

The first bull paused as well, looking concerned for the first time that night. After a moment, he looked out the window. "For his sake, I hope not. He's a good kid, and a real hero. Doesn't do him any good to be associating with the likes of _him_…" after another pause, he asked with a hushed tone, "You slipped the note to the kid, right?"

His kin nodded, quietly replying, "I recommended the Pass. Bypasses all the others, and is quickest way there."

"Good. And you put in the advice for dealing with the thieves, right?"

"Right."

"Good. That should do us fine. But when that horse captain comes by…mum's the word, got it?"

"Got it."

* * *

True to Tai Lung's prediction, it took them most of the night to make it to the inn. It was uneventful night, fortunately, and they made excellent time. They found the inn situated in the middle of a shallow lake that was nestled between four mountains. Like the one guard had said, the four mountains were nearly directly in line with the cardinal points of a compass, and the aptly named Lake Compass lay before them, its waters shimmering in the early morning light. Passing through one narrow strait down an even narrower path at the foot of one mountain, they paused in the golden light to look down at the Xiao Tou Inn.

Directly in front of them, a jetty jutted out into the middle of the lake, where a moderate-sized tavern stood on stilts just off the shoreline. The zig-zagging bridge leading up to the thieves' inn looked worn and rotten, with broken boards dotting the causeway. Po didn't like the look of it at all, suspecting his weight might encourage the boards to break as soon as they stepped on them, but he couldn't shake the feeling that he had seen this place before.

Tai Lung eyed the spot with a similar skeptical eye, but perhaps not for the same reasons as his traveling companion. Before they stepped onto the jetty, the snow leopard gripped his friend's thick arm and whispered, "Remember, we are just getting food and directions. We are not staying overnight. We get in, get out and keep going."

"Why?" Po asked. "It doesn't look that bad…"

Almost on cue, one of the shuttered windows flew open and found a large crocodile being flung into the lake's deep waters. From the open window, jeers, catcalls and snarls poured from the inn like pus from a wound, and the sound of breaking bones and splintering wood echoed off the peaks…

"Maybe we should keep going?" Po suggested.

Tai Lung sighed, looking regretful. "I wish we could, but we need to know an alternate route to Tibet—one that takes us away from the authorities—and there isn't another town for miles. As much as I hate to say it…we need to stop there for a meal, too."

"And directions."

"And directions," he nodded. Both paused, still eyeing the inn with concern before Tai Lung sighed before stepping onto the jetty. "Might as well get this over with…"

The wooden apparatus was sturdier than it looked—both of them were amazed Po hadn't fallen through, even on the most rotted boards. By the time they made it to the inn's door, they shared one last look before entering.

"We get in, get out, no questions asked?" Po asked.

"Exactly; oh, one last thing," Tai Lung hissed in his ear, "No eye contact. Absolutely none—these people consider eye contact a challenge to fight. Keep your head down, and for heaven's sake, don't draw attention to us."

Tai Lung pushed open the door.

The narrow rectangle of light poured across the floor of the darkened inn, where bandits and assassins, thieves and murderers watched their arrival from behind walls, tables, and dishes, from over heavy shoulders and from under cloaks' hoods. The proprietors were rabbits, and one of whom had his lapel in the grip of a scarred crocodile, the tray in the rabbit's hand shaking hard enough to rattle the bowl of noodles.

The pair exchanged a look and Po ventured forward, asking the rabbit, "Who owns this joint?"

"I-I-I do…" he stammered.

"Good," Po said. "What's the special?"

The rabbit cast an uncertain eye at the crocodile who still had him in his clutches. "N-n-noodle soup and s-s-s-six dumplings, for five _fen_."

"That's a steal," Tai Lung said. "Pay the man."

Po reached into a small money bag he kept inside his robe and extracted ten coins. "Two specials—we'll be at the table in the corner."

Tai Lung was impressed; he half expected Po to try to act _too_ tough, but instead, the panda exhibited restrained curtness, with just enough politeness. And even smarter was pulling out the _small_ money bag. True, they had much more on their persons than that, but it wasn't wise to draw attention to that in a den of thieves. And lastly, choosing a table in the corner—against the wall so no one could sneak up on them, facing the door, and close enough to an open window in case they needed to make a hasty retreat—was by far the smartest decision he'd made. Perhaps the panda wasn't as naïve as the snow leopard had originally thought.

They sat at the table, storing their knapsacks under their feet as a pretty female rabbit came and poured them tea; she seemed surprised that they declined the offer for alcohol. Once she had left the teacups with them, Po whispered to his friend, "How was that?"

"Not bad," he said. "You just might be catching on…but don't overdo it. The less you say, the better."

"Yeah…but I think they're already paying attention to us…" the panda said, indicating the unruly crowd.

"Of course they are," the snow leopard warned, blowing lightly on his tea to cool it. "They're sizing us up, trying to see if we're threats."

"What if they wanna fight?"

"If they want to fight, we get the hell out of here."

Po was depressed, if the frown peeking out from under his wide-brimmed hat was any evidence. Tai Lung nudged him. "Buck up, there'll be plenty of opportunity later…"

The waitress quickly returned with their meals and started to leave when Po hailed her back. "We're trying to get to Tibet, but our map's outta date, you got any newer ones?"

The doe was clearly used to shady characters, but she didn't seem to be threatened by the panda, or the snow leopard for that matter. "I'll check if we have extras. If not, I can find you directions. I'll be right back."

"Take your time," Tai Lung said, out of politeness more than anything else, and stuck a wonton into his mouth. Po quickly joined him, picking up his bowl of noodles and quietly slurping the broth. The whole time they were eating, they felt the glares and stares of the other patrons; most seemed curious, but a few were maliciously glowering at the newcomers. It wasn't doing much for their appetites as anxiety churned in their stomachs, but both warriors forced the food down, knowing this was likely the last good hot meal they would have for a while. Still, despite the glares and unspoken threats, none of these seemed to draw Po's attention more than two yellow-robed canines wearing flowers on their heads and speaking to nonplussed crocodile bandits.

"What's with the guys in the yellow robes over there?" Po asked, pointing his chopsticks at them.

Tai Lung glanced over, cursed, then hissed, shoving the panda's head down, "Don't look, you idiot! They'll come over—oh, _damn_!"

Po looked back and saw that the yellow-robed monks had spotted them and were on their way over to their table. They were carrying a basket of rolled parchments, and smiles that looked beatific from a distance, but as they came closer, took on a look of desperation seen only in the eyes of failed salesmen.

"Am I missing something here?" Po warily asked his companion.

"Po, they're Buddha's Witnesses," the snow leopard groaned. "They're Extremist Buddhists."

"Isn't that an oxymoron?"

"You'd be surprised; every religion has its nutters. Keep walking, preacher man," Tai Lung snapped when the monks got close enough. "We're not interested." When they didn't immediately back away, he snarled, "I mean it, _bugger off_."

"But Brother," one of them smiled, as if his life was in no immediate danger. "We only want to spread the message of Enlightenment and a breaking from the endless karmic cycle…"

"I'll take my chances on my next life," the snow leopard said flatly, raising his soup bowl to his lips. "Now go away."

"But Brother…"

"Look, _mate_," the snow leopard said through gritted teeth, slamming the bowl onto the table, "I am not your 'Brother', and I am not interested in your 'message'. And neither is my comrade. And if you pull your brochures out of that basket I'm shoving it into a place that will hurt—a lot."

The lead monk only smiled—which only served to expand the spotted feline's irritation—and said, "I can see you are one with a lot of pain in his life…"

"Life _is_ pain, and anyone who tells you differently is selling something. Now piss off."

"But—"

Tai Lung growled and visibly weighed his options: to maim or not to maim, _that_ was the question. Fortunately for him, the matter was settled when Po answered,

"Don't mind him—we're on our honeymoon, and he didn't get much sleep last night, right, schnookums?"

Before Tai Lung could recover quickly enough to berate the panda at the implication of their orientation and marital status, he became suddenly aware that the space formerly occupied by the Buddha's Witnesses was now conspicuously empty. Looking over to the door, he saw the two monks had gone as far as to abdicate the inn completely, rushing like yellow bats out of Hell to the out-of-doors, shrieking something about "heathens" and "hell-bound souls".

"I can't believe that worked," the snow leopard gaped.

"You're welcome," Po said triumphantly, returning to his wontons.

"I should kill you for doing that," Tai Lung said, resting his arm on the back of his chair. "But now I don't know if I should be mad or grateful."

"Again, you're welcome," Po said smugly, popping another wonton in his mouth.

"How did you know that would work?"

"Easy," the panda explained. "Dad had a cousin who got a lot of solicitors like that. One asked him 'Have you found the Enlightened One' and he asked 'You people lost him again? We can't trust you with anything!'."

Tai Lung chuckled. "I bet he scared off a few in his time."

Po paused because his mouth was full, then he swallowed, then he spoke: "You kiddin'? The time they showed up at New Year's, and the whole family was there, right? He answered the door and got the spiel, and he replied 'Actually, we were about to sacrifice our goat neighbor to Yanluo Wang, but you're welcome to stay for dinner'."

Tai Lung laughed, shaking his head. "How fast did they run away?"

"It was a pretty quick retreat," Po chuckled. "I didn't think anyone could run that fast—"

He was cut off when a heavy fist slammed onto their table, rattling their dishes. The pair looked up into the low-browed visage of a very angry bull.

"Oh bloody hell…" Tai Lung muttered.

The bull glared right at them, snorting through his flared nostrils. "Fairies, huh? We don't like your kind 'round here."

"We figured that," Po said. "And obviously, sarcasm's lost on you."

Tai Lung nearly choked on a wonton and swallowed hard. What was Po _doing_?!

The bull glared. "I'm thinkin' you want some trouble, little man."

"And I'm thinking you're not burdened with an overabundance of schooling," Po said with a disarming smile.

Tai Lung gaped at the panda as dread settled in his gut. The panda was going to get them _both_ killed!

The bull pulled back and cracked his knuckles, "You say one more thing, boy, and I'll whip ya like your daddy never did!"

"Wow," Po said, leaning back nonchalantly. "Your childhood must've really _sucked._ Do you need a hug?"

"THAT'S IT!" the bull roared, raising his fist to bring down on the panda. Tai Lung panicked when he realized Po wasn't moving, but before he could move to prevent a certain mortal blow, the bull's feet fell from under him, and a split second later he was propelled through the air and straight through the wall. Po and Tai Lung stared in awe at the bull-shaped hole in the outer wall, then turned back when a silky voice purred, "You're right; sarcasm is completely lost on the likes of him."

When the pair turned around, they both froze. They knew their faces from the inked depictions plastered on walls throughout the valley, featuring the elfin façades of the three petite spotted females that stood before them. Their leader, sporting eyes like garnets, stood front and center, arms akimbo, and her sisters—undoubtedly, for the family resemblance was unmistakable—flanked her, the middle child sporting verdant green eyes, the youngest' eyes blue as a northern sea. Their weapons gleamed in the low candlelight, hanging ominously from their belts, revealed only by the parting of their long black cloaks. There was no doubt in the kung fu masters' minds that the ones standing before them were the infamous Wu Sisters.

"Um, thanks…" Po hesitated. The eldest sister arched a delicate brow as her younger sisters peered at them with curiosity. Po decided to break the awkward pause the only way his father had taught him: "You wanna sit? We can buy you a drink or an appetizer or somethin'."

The red-eyed female blinked, but her expression was otherwise indecipherable. Her tone betrayed her surprise. "…You're offering us food? When we barely know you?"

"You should know," the blue-eyed sister said, "We were taught to never accept anything from strangers."

"Momma raised no fools," the green-eyed sister said, buffing her claws on her tunic.

"Hey, we owe ya for takin' that guy out."

"Don't bother," the eldest flippantly waved. "He had it coming."

After another pause, Tai Lung and Po exchanged significant looks, then Po turned back to the sisters, stood, and bowed. "I'm Ping," he lied, then pointed to Tai Lung. "And this is my friend…Sonam. What're your names?"

Completely taken aback, the sisters shared a significant, stunned look, before introducing themselves. The eldest pointed at herself. "Tian."

The middle, sylvan-eyed sister answered, "Jiang."

The youngest, with the lapis eyes, gave a small wave. "Zhu."

"Well there you go," Po beamed. "Now we're not strangers anymore."

Tai Lung almost laughed. He wanted to groan at the seeming prevalence of all pandas being overly trusting…but in this case, this had taken the most dangerous assassins in China by complete surprise, dissolving whatever malcontent or ill will the female snow leopards had originally intended. He even noticed a smile tugging at Wu Jiang's lips. Po offered again. "Food? Plenty of tea, too. We won't take up too much of your time, promise."

The sisters shared another look, the youngest looking to Wu Tian for a decision. The red-eyed female finally relented, stealing a chair from a nearby table. "All right, sure."

"What're ya drinkin'?" Po asked. "Tea, or something a little stronger?"

"Tea," Wu Tian curtly said. "We don't drink."

"Devout Buddhists, are you?" Tai Lung asked ironically. The three sisters smirked simultaneously, as if the trio were amused by his sense of humor.

"We wouldn't go that far," Wu Tian said with a suggestive smirk. "But as far as vices go, we're pretty clean."

"So who are _you_," Wu Jiang suspiciously asked, quickly changing the subject. "Complete strangers—have never seen you before in these parts…"

"We're just passing through," Po said, ordering a round of jasmine tea for the table. "Goin' on a _pilgrimage_, if you catch my drift."

"_Ah_…" Wu Tian said with interest. "So I take it you two are _monks_?"

"Pilgrims," Tai Lung glared.

"Ah, looking for _inner peace_?" the red-eyed sister teased. "How curious you end up in a place like this…"

"Just asking for directions, love," the male snow leopard mocked.

"Weird," Wu Zhu said. "I thought only women did that."

Both males scowled, to the delight of the Sisters. Wu Zhu giggled, her blue eyes shining with mirth, but carried the sharp edge of steel. "So where are you bound, pilgrim?"

"Tibet," Po said. "We're trying to find the quickest way there…"

"Oh, is that all?" Wu Tian pulled a piece of parchment from her tunic and spread it on the table, pointing out a thin red line on the map. It passed through Guizhou, but deviated from their original path to cut through southern Sichuan and the very tip of Northwestern Yunnan; and even better, it bypassed mountains altogether. "Take the Red Bird Pass; as long as you don't deviate from it, it will put you in Tibet, just on the other side of the Yunnan border. After that, you're on your own."

"You're being unusually accommodating…" Tai Lung said suspiciously.

Wu Jiang smirked, "Just doing our part, Brother. We siblings-in-arms must look out for each other, shouldn't we?"

"We appreciate the help," Po said. "How far away is this Pass?"

"About a mile north of here," Wu Jiang pointed through the bull-shaped hole she had made. "There'll be a big gate made of red sandstone—you can't miss it."

"Oi," Tai Lung objected when Wu Tian started folding the map. "I think we'll need that!"

"No, you won't," she smiled, and for some reason, Tai Lung swore he had seen that secretive grin somewhere before… "Just walk up the path, take a right, take the third left, and there's the beginning of the road."

"It's a hell of a lot faster than taking the Bing Yuan Road, or the Blue Dragon Pass," Wu Zhu said with a derisive laugh. "I can't believe anyone's stupid enough to take it anymore!"

"Erm, why is that?" Tai Lung asked. "We've heard both are rather reliable…"

"For people who behave themselves, sure," Wu Jiang said. "But the Imperial Guards run both those roads, and, even if we weren't wanted criminals, the toll gates would rob us blind."

"The Red Bird Pass is the fastest way to Tibet. The beauty of that," Wu Tian smiled, "Is that once you're over the border, you can get away with murder."

This inside joke made her little sisters grin and laugh wickedly behind their hands. Po sent Tai Lung an uncertain look; Tai Lung said nothing.

"So, uh, why's it called the 'Red Bird Pass'?" Po asked.

Wu Tian stood to leave, silently signaling her sisters to do the same. "Some legend or another, that a phoenix used to live along the route, or it's the route that goes to some 'mystical temple' with magic and treasure and nonsense like that," she scoffed. "Don't believe the bandits—there's nothing out there. Just mountains, mountains, and more mountains."

"Are you sure?" Tai Lung said, sounding disheartened.

"Trust us," Wu Zhu said with conviction. "We've hid out there enough times to know…there's nothing there. Maybe a few monks and some small villages, but nothing to get excited about."

"If you want a place to 'pray'," Wu Jiang said, "Right over the border from Yunnan, and you're set."

Wu Tian cast her garnet-hued stare between the two males and smiled again, "Have a pleasant trip, gentlemen." With this dismissal, the sisters raised the hoods of the cloaks and moved to the door.

When they had departed, Po cast a look around the dining room and saw that the nasty looks had not abated. Nudging his friend, he whispered, "Think we should get going?"

Tai Lung had appeared lost in thought, and being startled from his musings his fur stood on end. Seeing the glares as well, he nodded. "Let's get the hell out of here." They left a tip (which they were sure would be swiped by the clientele anyway) and hastily departed. When they had made it safely across the jetty and to the bank of the lake, Tai Lung glanced back over his shoulder, then peered suspiciously up the slope they had taken.

"You okay, buddy?" Po asked.

Tai Lung felt a chill and shuddered. "I don't know. Let's get going; I've got a bad feeling about sticking around here much longer…"

* * *

Back at the gatehouse at the entrance to the Thread of Hope, the two bulls were enjoying their morning tea when their door slammed open. They immediately reached for their weapons, but had to slow their surging adrenaline when they saw who was there.

"Captain Zang," the first bull said. "Wasn't expecting you for another couple days."

Captain Zang Deshi—a massive black horse with a long inky black mane and white star on his forehead—strode into the gatehouse, his hooves clip-clopping on the floorboards. Behind him were three others, a massive bull elephant, a bay-colored equine of slighter build, and a young tiger, the last of whom the first bull thought looked astoundingly familiar…but the black-coated equine officer didn't allow him the chance to think it over any further.

"I'll be brief, gentlemen, for I know you're busier this time of year," the Captain said. "I have in good confidence that my quarry passed through here last night."

"Which one?" the first bull asked. It did him no good to toy with this warhorse; Zang Deshi was nearly as tall as the elephant behind him, and almost as muscular as Tai Lung, and bore himself with a regal air that was associated with men who came from a long line of impressive military lineage. The decorations on his armor said enough to that—who knew how many generations of warriors was in his bloodline? Besides that, for a horse, Captain Zang was not as free-spirited and lively as his species would have suggested. In fact, he could be downright cruel if he felt the situation called for it.

"I'm a bit more patient today," Zang glared, "So I'll let that slide. Where is Tai Lung?"

"Dunno."

"You _don't know_?"

The first bull shrugged. "Yeah, he came through here, but I don't know which road he's taking."

"My men noticed he was not traveling alone," Zang said, whipping his head to indicate his scouts behind him. "There was a panda with him."

"The Dragon Warrior," the second bull said.

Zang arched a brow, visibly thinking. "Indeed? That's interesting…Where were they headed?"

"Tibet," the first bull said, despite his cousin's warning glares not to say anything. "Though if you ask me, I'm not sure there's much to worry about. Believe it or not, the panda was able to defeat him—if Tai Lung was really a danger, the Dragon Warrior wouldn't travel with him, would he?"

"Whether or not the snow leopard is dangerous is not for you to decide," Captain Zang glared. "Recall that you were not posted here because of your ability to think. You are guards, simple, brainless guards, and don't forget that. It is _not_ your job to think or form your own opinions—your job is to follow orders, or lose your head. Am I clear?"

Apparently Zang was in one of his cruel moods, so he grudgingly replied, "Yes, sir."

"Now, you will tell me which road they are taking."

"If you saw them come and go," the first bull boldly replied, "surely you know that already."

"They're avoiding the Bing Yuan Road!" the second bull spoke up before the Captain lost his temper. "They were going to take one of the smuggler's roads, but never said which one."

"And you didn't try to capture him?" Zang asked with an accusatory tone.

"Our job is to guard the entrance to the Thread of Hope," the second bull reminded. "Nowhere in our job description does it say we arrest outlaws. And even if it did, we don't have the authority to do so, nor the cells to hold them."

Zang rolled his dark eyes and wearily replied, "It's called a 'citizen's arrest', gentlemen."

"What citizen is stupid enough to try and fight Tai Lung?" The second bull's only saving grace was his sincere tone and countenance. Had he been abrasive as his kin, no doubt he would have been court marshaled in a heartbeat…or perhaps killed. "Besides, if we called for reinforcements, no one would have gotten here in time to catch him. We had no choice but to let them go."

Captain Zang appeared to agree with his logic. If the entire Anvil of Heaven had been destroyed in mere minutes by that one snow leopard, what chance did two guards have? The powerful warhorse instead asked, "Did they say _why _they were going to Tibet?"

"They were pretty mum about the whole thing—only stayed about fifteen minutes. Look, if you want someone else to attest for Tai Lung, you could ask Mrs. He…"

"I'm not interested in that woman's opinion of him. My job is to bring him to justice," Zang snorted. "And to justice, I shall bring him. Quon!" he barked.

The young tiger jumped and came forward; the second bull looked at him sympathetically. That tiger was just a kid; what was he doing chasing a dangerous man? He watched as the youth received his orders to begin tracking the two warriors, then the three soldiers departed, leaving Zang standing in the doorway. The warhorse did not look pleased.

"If I find you have misled me, there will be swift repercussions."

"We told you what we know."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

Zang glared at the guards a moment longer, watching them for any signs of deceit. Once he was satisfied of their sincerity, he turned on his hoof and marched for the door without a single goodbye. The guards didn't let out the breaths they had been holding until the door had slammed behind him.

* * *

The day before the assassin was to meet them, Lang could not have been more nervous. True, there were many things he needed to be concerned about, most notably keeping his head down and keeping from getting the snot kicked out of him, but he couldn't deny he was extremely nervous about the whole affair. Lord White Wolf's rapidly swinging moods didn't help, and the lack of support from the Half Dozen was about as helpful as a bucket of spit. Until the assassin arrived, Lang just had to keep his head down, do as he was told, and avoid any confrontations.

Unfortunately for him, confrontations seemed to follow him like flies to a carcass.

Today, for example, he was carrying firewood across White Wolf's compound, preparing the household for the coming winter. It wasn't a particularly large home; in fact, it was rather small for someone with White Wolf's wealth. Unlike other rich men, the warlord was the stingiest son of a bitch Lang had ever heard of. He could have afforded a bigger, nicer place, sure, but that meant spending money, which was the one and only thing he coveted and loved. To call him a tightwad was an understatement. Still, the small wolf didn't mind the small size: it meant less area for him to clean.

As the omega, his place was pretty much guaranteed. Firewood duty, dishes, refuse removal and the more-reviled chamber pot duty was primarily what the wolf was expected to do. He owed White Wolf a lot of money, and the only way to conceivably pay him back was to become his slave…for however long it took to pay off his debt.

The Half Dozen, on the other hand, were hired goons—for there was really no other way to describe them. He supposed Lan Duo and Tan Lan weren't so bad; the grey and tan wolves (respectfully) stood up for him on occasion, even though he was sure it was only for self-serving purposes and not from any conceived sense of camaraderie. He mostly avoided Yu Wang, the light grey wolf having an attitude and lewd conduct that bothered the omega to no end. Xu Jiu was alright, as long as he had food and drink to assuage his temper. But Bao Nu…well, the less said about that wrathful beast, the better. Zi Hao, the only black wolf in the sextet, was by far the most aggressive, which seemed true across the board for any wolf with that colorization, and Lang avoided him at any cost, though he suspected the Half Dozen's leader went out of his way to kick the omega around.

Currently struggling with overloaded arms, Lang stumbled across the courtyard, desperately holding on to the bulky logs for fear of dropping them. He knew he shouldn't have overloaded himself, but the sooner he got this task done, the sooner he could get to the others, and if he didn't complete all his duties by the end of the day, he'd be in for it. He lost the battle and dropped one log, which he tripped over, and slammed into someone. The force of impact caused him to drop his armload and fall hard onto his back, winding him.

As he lay catching his breath, Lang quickly realized with increasing dread who it was he had bumped into. A fearsome snarl exited the injured party's maw. Lang yelped when the other wolf yanked on his ear and twisted hard, causing the omega to drop the other logs.

"Worthless!" the older wolf snarled. "You aren't worth the money I paid for you, you useless sack of flesh!"

Lang cowered at the feet of the white lupine, kowtowing and pleading for mercy. "A thousand pardons, I beg your forgiveness, sir! I did not mean to disturb you, please forgive me!"

Lord White Wolf glared at the unfortunate slave before kicking him in the head. Lang sprawled on the ground, futilely covering his head as the warlord took out a cane and began savagely beating him. "Forgiveness! I'll give you forgiveness! This is the best you deserve, wolfdog! You sniveling, disgusting _halfbreed_!"

"I'm not a halfbreed!" Lang shouted. The caning immediately stopped, and the omega felt his heart sink into his gut. He had talked back to White Wolf…and he was probably going to be killed. He didn't bother looking up and begging for mercy again, because he wasn't going to get it. He heard the warlord growl and drop the cane, then the sound of steel sliding out of a sheath, and Lang readied himself for the killing blow…

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bunk, didn't you, Sir?"

Lang sucked down a gulp of air and chanced a look up. Lan Duo stood just off to the side, arms crossed over his chest and regarding his employer with a cool look.

"You'd do well to mind your damn business, Lan," White Wolf growled.

"You don't pay me enough to do that, boss. Leave the kid alone, he's harmless. So he dropped a log on your foot, big deal."

The warlord pointed an accusatory finger at the cowering omega. "Little bastard needs to learn his place."

"Why bother?" the grey wolf shrugged. "Zi Hao beat that into him the other night. Why should you have to exert unnecessary energy?"

White Wolf snorted and sheathed the sword; Lang let out a sigh of relief.

"I should just kill him; he's not worth the money I paid for him," White Wolf snapped, his sharp white teeth gleaming in the afternoon light.

"True," Tan Lan said, popping up next to him. "But you and I both know that's a poor investment." The tan-furred wolf mentally calculated, "As it stands, he's already worked enough to pay five percent of his purchase price. So at the rate he's going you'll have him for…approximately twenty more years."

Lang lowered his ears; twenty years? He'd be dead before then! And if he died before his debt was repaid, his family would have to pay it all back, and he knew that meant guaranteed slavery for them too.

"What use is that to me?" White Wolf asked.

"You don't have to pay him—free labor is a bargain in anyone's book," the tan wolf smirked.

White Wolf glared at the cheeky canine. "I'd kill you for insubordination if you weren't such a good accountant."

"Which probably explains my New Year's bonus," Tan Lan grinned.

"You got a bonus?" Lan Duo gaped. "You bastard! I didn't see a single _fen_."

"It's your own fault," the white-furred warlord snapped. "You want a bonus, do some actual damn work!"

Casting a passive look at the omega, he sneered and smacked Lang in the head. "Pick this up, and get your tail moving! If I see you dawdling, it's the rat treatment for you."

Lang paled and felt sick. Of all the tortures White Wolf was known for…using the combination of starved rats and hot coals had to be the most horrifying. He swallowed hard as Lord White Wolf quitted the scene, marching back into his house and slamming the door behind him.

Once he was safely out of earshot, Lang smiled with relief up at the two taller wolves. "Thank you…"

"Don't mention it," Lan Duo flatly replied.

"No, really, I—"

"_Ever_," the grey wolf glared. "If Hao finds out we stuck up for you, he'd kill us and skin us, and not necessarily in that order."

"So why did you help me?" Lang asked.

Lan Duo sighed and shook his head as if the answer should have been obvious. "Because White Wolf never kills anyone himself if he can avoid it, which means one of _us_ would've had to do it. Then we'd have to drag your dead weight to the refuse pile, _then_ clean up the blood…"

"Probably have to replace the paving stones, maybe the entire courtyard," Tan Lan nodded. "Blood's a bitch to get out of _everything_. And that would cost us a pretty _fen_."

"Completely not worth it; killing you would've been, like, work and effort," Lan Duo remarked, looking slightly sickened at the thought of exerting more energy than was necessary. "And didn't I tell you something about learning to keep your mouth shut?"

"But I'm _not_ a halfbreed," Lang glared.

"'Course you're not," Tan Lan said, arms akimbo, "But don't tell _him_ that. Hell, he thought my name was Tan Lung for a few months, but I wasn't stupid enough to correct him when he got it wrong."

"You're not smart," Lan Duo said. "But you're smart enough to want to live, right?"

Lang nodded.

"Accept you're a slave, kid," Duo said, turning away. "Accept that nothing will change that, and that'll make the rest of your life much easier to handle."

Lang hung his head, fighting back the wave of despair and crushing depression that forced the breath from his chest. Nothing would change. He should have run the night he'd gone to the Wolf's Head, but he knew that was foolish. If he had run, his family would have suffered for it. Despite his species' reputation, Lang was neither selfish nor self-serving. His family was his pack, and packs were fiercely loyal to one another. It had taken all his nerve to tell his parents not to help him, to forget about him, to disown him. He didn't want to drag them through the mud; they were better off pretending he was dead.

He envied the Half Dozen. Oh, he would have given anything to be as strong as they were, as smart, as wily, as good a fighter. In fact, to be a warrior as fearsome as Zi Hao would have been his greatest aspiration…had he still hopes that dreams came true. But it was never going to happen; he would die here, a slave, more miserable than a mange-ridden dog, and whatever dreams he may have had before were as useless as the leaves falling onto the courtyard floor.

With these miserable thoughts in mind, Lang started to pick up the logs, careful to stack them so he could see where he was going. But while he struggled with his load, he couldn't shake the feeling he was being watched. With this in mind, he hurried to complete his chores. He needn't have worried. White Wolf was not the one watching him with extreme interest.

No, Lang's spy was perched in a tree overhanging the compound walls, hidden behind the golden yellow leaves. The spy's spotted tail twisted and curled as his blue-green eyes crinkled with a smile. The omega did not yet know it, but things were about to get very interesting…

* * *

Not much to say here. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but hey, things are rolling along.

FYI: The line "Life is pain, anyone who says otherwise is selling something" is a nod to one of my favorite movies "The Princess Bride". And of course, as many of you know I am a huge Firefly fan, Po's line "Clearly you're not burdened by an overabundance of schooling" is one of Mal's witticisms...and said comment quickly degenerates into a bar fight. Good times.

Please read and review!


	6. Chapter 6: Breaching the Walls

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, it is the property of Dreamworks Animation Studios. My OCs belong to me, so please don't use them without my permission.

I apologize for how long this took to post. Holidays notwithstanding, my computer contracted a particularly nasty virus, which seriously crippled any attempts to update. So, until we can get the files backed up and a system recovery disk, my work will be primarily at my glorious local library. And I will not be able to respond to emails or PMs or reviews for a long while as well. So if you have any questions, please remain patient (though frankly, my patience for lacking a personal home computer is running low). Cheers.

* * *

Chapter 6: Breaching the Walls

* * *

Wu Lien was in no mood for compromise on anything. Since Po and Tai Lung had left the valley to go to Tibet, she had been especially distracted with all that had happened in their absence. Less than a week after they had departed, the Valley of Peace celebrated the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, though for those directly related to the journeying vagabonds, the affair was less than merry. Baked mooncakes, festive decorations and copious amounts of food aside, the whole dinner was downcast. The old red panda knew why Shifu was so quiet, and why Mr. Ping, Su Lin, Mei Xing, and Sonam were all so pensive. Even the Furious Five looked more concerned with anything other than the holiday…most of them went back to training right after the meal.

If there was an up-side to the subdued dinner, at least Tigress and Dalang were speaking to each other again. Wu could only shake her head in wonderment; she had been right when she said there was a lot of fire in that marriage. While for certain activities, fire and passion was a good thing, other times it boiled over. Fortunately, both of them seemed to get over their respective tempers pretty quickly. Of course, having such an adorable son probably helped; it was strange, Wu thought, how that child seemed to have a knack for doing just the thing to keep his parents from fighting…

Though she had been through a lot in her own life, Wu Lien was not immune to stress, and all the stress currently swirling around was having an effect on her; even Shifu had noticed she was shorter-tempered than usual. Giving in to her own temptations, she cancelled her classes to "prepare for the Double-Ninth Festival"…at least that's what she told her students. The truth was that she had multiple reasons to open up her schedule.

Foremost on her mind was Su Lin. The panda girl had come to her a few days ago, clearly distracted, and nearly on the verge of tears. Wu knew what the matter was, but for some damnably irritating reason, Su Lin was not willing to discuss it, at least no further than her fears of Po's apparent resentment towards her. Try as she might, the red panda could not get the young female to open up about the main issue at hand, namely, "the birds and the bees". Su Lin had left that meeting feeling more confused and miserable than when she had arrived, and Wu left that meeting feeling like she needed a very large glass of wine.

Second was Mei Xing. Hearing of her sudden hypoglycemic attack in the marketplace had been a major cause for concern. The doctor had been called, Wu had checked the snow leopardess' vital signs…and promptly chastised her when the doctor, Wu and Mei Xing all realized she had forgotten to take her ginseng that morning. After the proper dosage of the aforementioned medicine, she was fine by the end of the day, though Sonam scolded her more harshly than Wu had for the memory lapse. The red panda knew she'd have to get the pregnant feline alone to counsel her, to let her know that Sonam wasn't truly angry…but she had misgivings that her words would have any effect. Incidentally, Wu remembered counseling another pregnant snow leopardess whenever her husband displayed similar behaviors, many years before…

Lastly was Dalang. Shifu had told her about Po's vision, and, based on the baddie's description, and considering her experience with the Jiao Clan, Wu could name a good ten candidates off the top of her head. The trouble was that most of those men were dead, and the few who were likely still alive were so old they were in no shape to cause so much trouble. At least she hoped so. As much as Dalang's knowledge of the intimate workings of Shen's army would have been a boon, neither Po nor Tai Lung had consulted him before leaving, fearing that any postponement would have terrible consequences. Considering how stubborn the Amur tiger was, she had to agree with them; had they stuck around until after Dalang confessed, it might have been too late to do anything anyway.

Which was what brought her to the Long and Feng Café that day (that and, of course, the promise of Ping's Secret Ingredient Soup). Ignoring the decorations for the upcoming Double-Ninth Festival, she stepped inside, side-stepping the tables and walking straight up to the counter where Mr. Ping gave her a nod and reached for the pot of Secret Ingredient Soup.

"Good morning, Mrs. Shifu!" the goose greeted. "Your usual?"

Wu smiled; Ping had made it a jovial habit of calling her "Mrs. Shifu" ever since she had gotten married, though occasionally they shared a laugh when referring to Shifu as "Mr. Wu". "Yes please, Ping, a bowl of your finest. And maybe a cup of _baijiu_."

"You want wine this early?" he asked with concern, bringing the soup to her. As he sprinkled some spices directly into the bowl, he finally noted the look on her face. Having a sixth sense that amazed Wu every time he utilized it, he asked, "So which one is it today?"

She closed her eyes and sighed heavily. "All three; I'm trying to decide which one should be first. What are their moods like today?"

Ping cast an uncertain look over his shoulder at Dalang, who was grabbing some logs for the other stoves. The tiger didn't seem to notice them, so intent was he on his work. Ping turned back to Wu and whispered, "I think he is distracted by something, but he won't say what. He's in a better mood than he was before Moon Festival."

"That's good…" she said unconvincingly. "And my girls?"

"Mei Xing is still tired, and looks a bit worn out, if you ask me. Su Lin…" he sighed, confessing, "I don't know what to do, madam. I tried everything I know to lift her spirits…"

"Ping, this is not your fault. Su Lin is having a rough time, and I'm trying my best to make it better, as we all are."

"I'm worried about her. I'm worried about Po," he said, shaking his head.

"I am too," she said, "But we can't let those worries paralyze us." She looked back to Dalang, who was thoroughly engrossed in forming dumplings for steaming. Then she looked towards the two sets of stairs, the first leading up to Su Lin's room, the second leading up to the private apartments of the two feline couples. _Decisions, decisions…_

"I can hold the wine for later," Ping offered, an offer she readily accepted:

"Save the bottle, if you would; I have a feeling I'll need it." She opted to seeing Mei Xing first; of the three, she figured this would be the least emotionally volatile. Fortunately, she found the snow leopardess sitting quietly, knitting a baby blanket with soft yellow wool, the yarn threaded through her fingers as she worked the needles. Sonam was nowhere to be found, which relieved the red panda; it would be much easier to speak to Mei Xing without him.

"Hey, Auntie," the snow leopardess smiled. "How are you?"

"Fine, dear, just fine. Did you remember your ginseng this morning?"

Mei Xing narrowed her eyes and focused more attention on her work than was necessary. Wu also noticed the feline's posture was as rigid as a sword's blade. "You forget something _one_ time, and _no one_ will let you forget it!" she snapped, then cursed loudly when she dropped a few stitches from the left needle. Wu waited as she let out a string of four-letter words and took her seat next to her. Mei Xing seemed to realize she was making a scene and put her knitting down to snap at the old woman. "_What_?!"

The red panda female had a feeling that if Mei Xing was the _least_ emotionally volatile person she'd speak to today…she would need a lot more than wine to get through it. "Give me one guess: Sonam."

"We have a winner," Mei Xing glowered. "I know I fucked up—does he have to remind me every single gods-damned _hour_?!"

Wu shushed her, "Deep breaths, dear, deep breaths…He's just worried about you."

"He has a _hilarious_ way of showing it. I don't get him. One minute I can't get him to look at me and the next, he's breathing down my neck! What is his deal?!"

The red panda considered this. A sense of déjà vu came over her, and she immediately ascertained the reason for the male's baffling behavior. "If it is all right with you, I will speak to him about it. In my experience with the man, he may not be aware that his actions are affecting you like this."

"He strikes me as pretty perceptive," Mei Xing said shortly. "You think he'd pick up the signals."

"He spent the last thirty years as an assassin; these kinds of signals are different for him. He's not used to reading emotions like this. Remember, too, that he doesn't know the full extent of your abuse…not even Tai Lung knows, does he?"

"No, he knows," the snow leopardess sighed, her anger abating. "I figured of all people who should know, it would be him."

Wu gently took her hand in hers. "Despite what you may believe, there is nothing to be ashamed of."

"So why do I feel like it?" she quietly asked.

"We talked about this when I first brought you into my home," the elder female reminded. "Those scars will be there for a long time, I know they will. And I know it's difficult to differentiate your ex from your current husband…"

"And it shouldn't be, I know that," she admitted, suddenly on the verge of tears. "I just…I can't break these habits. I want to. I try to. But I just can't do it. Auntie, what the hell is wrong with me?"

"Nothing," Wu said, standing on the chair to hug the crying feline. "Absolutely nothing is wrong with you, do you hear me?"

"I can't let it go," she said, quietly sobbing, "I just can't let it go!"

"Recovery takes time," Wu said. "It takes patience…it takes time, and it takes strength. And I know you have that strength. A weak woman would not have been able to chip her future husband's tooth with one punch."

Mei Xing smiled, clearly remembering her first day of kung fu training with Tai Lung. "…And she wouldn't be able to smash in her ex's face."

"'Atta girl," Wu grinned. She hopped down and picked up the knitting, skillfully picking up the dropped stitches and handing the work back to the snow leopardess. "Are you hungry, or thirsty?"

She shook her head. "I'm fine…but I could use some company."

Wu smiled, "Of course. Excuse me one moment, there's just some quick business I need to take care of…"

In that moment, Sonam proved to be the source of Tai Lung's habit of bad timing when he walked into the room, only to be dragged backwards by the tail by a very annoyed red panda. "C'mere, Handsome; we need to talk."

Safely in another room—the nursery, where Sonam was constructing a crib for his first grandchild—Wu closed the door and affixed him with a stern look, saying, "I'm concerned with the way you're behaving around her."

"What?" he asked, perplexed. "I'm not doing anything inappropriate…"

"Nothing like _that_, no." She shook her head, "My greater concern is…frankly, behavior I remember from you about forty years ago."

"What behavior?" he asked curiously. Wu wondered, _Does he really not see it?_

"Let's see…" she began ticking off the points on her fingers. "Pregnant female snow leopard, hormonally charged, given to feeling extreme changes in mood after her husband displays perplexing mood shifts of his own…tell me, does that sound familiar?"

"What are you accusing me of?" he glared.

"I'm not accusing you of anything," she glared back, "Except being as emotionally callous to your daughter-in-law as you were to your wife!"

She withstood his icy stare and stood tall against his retort. "Mei Xing is _not_ Nima."

"I'm glad you understand that," she said, putting her hands on her hips. "The key difference is that Nima was taught not to take any bullshit, whereas Mei Xing had to endure it, or suffer. Has four decades dulled your memory so? Can you stand there and tell me you _don't_ remember saying things to your very pregnant wife that made her cry…or throw a chair at you, on one occasion?"

"I deserved the chair," he affirmed with a guilty look. "But Mei's just as tough as Nima was, maybe tougher."

"No she isn't."

"Yes, she is," he snapped. "All I know about her past is what my son told me, and I can tell _you_ that _any_ woman who goes through all that and still manages to move on with her life _is_ tough. A bigger spitfire I've never seen. Why you still choose to treat her like a victim—"

"She _is_ a victim!" she argued.

"Not anymore, she isn't!" he spat. "Aren't we taking care of her, feeding her, giving her everything she was denied? Hell, if I had the chance, I'd take up the sword again to take out that worm she calls an ex-husband! But I'm not going to remind her of that, now, am I? Damn it, Wu, I can't stand seeing what those memories do to her, you hear?"

Wu actually stepped back as Sonam's temper rose; she had never known him to get so angry, and at that moment, she felt truly worried.

Sonam snarled and gritted his teeth. "I don't treat her like a victim, because she isn't. She's a sodding _survivor_. Call her a victim, and she will always be a victim. Call her a victim, and she'll be at that bastard's mercy for the rest of her life."

"But do you need to be so critical?" she finally shot back. "You reduced her to tears the other day—"

"What, in the marketplace? That wasn't my fault!"

"You _yelled_ at her, you idiot!"

"I was _worried_ about her, you old bat!"

"You can't treat Mei Xing like you treated Nima," Wu said. "Nima would have taken it all in stride—Mei Xing won't. No matter what you may think, being in this situation brings up too many bad memories."

"Her situation brings up plenty of memories of my own!"

Exasperated, Wu finally snapped, "Sonam, will you get it into your thick skull that Nima's death was _not your damn fault_!" As soon as it came out, Wu covered her mouth in horror. She hadn't meant to be so blunt. But it had the effect she had been hoping for…and now she kicked herself for wanting that reaction. Sonam stood there, looking like he had been slapped in the face, and both old creatures had no idea what to say.

Someone cleared their throat, and they turned to the door to see Mei Xing lightly waving at them. "Hey, Auntie, I think I need to rain check on the visit. I'm feeling pretty tired, so I'll go lie down for a while. If you're not busy later, maybe you could stay for dinner?"

Grateful for a way out of that awkward situation, Wu nodded, "Yes, of course; Shifu would never miss an opportunity to see you all."

"Or a chance to get his fluffy arse beat by a goose at mahjong," Sonam muttered with a rough chuckle. He thumbed over his shoulder at the room and the half-constructed crib. "I know the hammering bothers you, so I'll do some painting while you sleep—sleep well, love."

Mei Xing smiled and waved goodbye, moving across the hall to her bedroom and closing the door behind her. What neither elder knew was that she had no intention of going to sleep; she had heard the raised voices and gone to investigate, and found that Auntie had indeed discovered the answer to her question after all.

* * *

Having taken care of her first concern, Wu Lien was on her way to her second trial…for there was no other way to describe what was sure to be an emotional talk. As she walked to the stairs to the Ping Family's private apartments, Mr. Ping gave her a significant look and shook his head as he returned to his work, chopping vegetables at an alarming speed. The old red panda sighed through her nose and ascended the stairs slowly, careful to make just enough noise to let her next subject know that someone was coming. Once she made it to the door to her room, Wu knocked and cracked open the door.

"Su Lin? May I come in?"

The panda hastily wiped her tears away and cleared her throat. "Y-yes! It's open."

Wu took a deep breath as she prepared for the plunge; she opened the door and offered a maternal smile to the young woman. "Hello, dear, how are you feeling today? Ping told me you were still feeling tired."

Su Lin sat on the edge of her bed. The evidence of her depression was blatantly clear, from the tear streaks on her cheeks to the reddened eyes and slumped posture, but Wu knew better than to say anything about it just yet.

"He gave me the day off…again," the young female said. "He…he said he doesn't want me working until I've set myself right."

"And that's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone needs a break sometimes, and this year's Moon Festival _was_ a bit more trying than last year's." She pointed at herself, in an effort to get the girl to smile. "Look at me: I'm supposed to be up to my ears in classes by now, and I took the day off. No one's immortal, we can't do everything."

"But the Double-Ninth Festival starts next week," Su Lin said. "There's so much cleaning to do, and cooking…"

"And you're not going to do all that alone, you know that," Wu said, sitting on a stool next to the bed. "Remember, this entire household is going to be preparing. Why, right as we speak, Sonam is already putting up some decorations, and Dalang's going to clean the family altar when his shift ends. Mei Xing will be cooking after her nap, and you can help her there."

"But the laundry, the dusting, the sweeping…"

"Su Lin, darling," Wu said firmly, "Do not look at the whole, you can't see the forest for the trees. You're not alone in this."

"So why does it feel like I am?" she whispered. Judging by the waver in her voice, Wu guessed that was as loud as the female giant panda was willing to get without bursting into tears.

"Su Lin, I know it's been hard, and there were many times that I was unable to give you what you needed, and especially what you deserved. I know the family you have now is…nonconformist, to put it nicely, and I know that we can not take the place of your real family in your heart…" she hesitated, studying her for a reaction. "But do not forget that we _are_ a family, though we are not linked by blood." Wu cracked a smile, "I had a maiden aunt tell me on more than one occasion before I left home that 'friends are Heaven's apology for family'. Friends are a gift, and you come to love them as if they were family. And Su Lin, believe me when I say that I love you as a daughter."

This appeared to be the wrong thing to say, as a sob tore through the girl's throat and fresh tears fell. Wu was startled; she had not expected this sort of reaction. She reached inside her sleeve and handed the girl a handkerchief, "Shh, shh…Su-Su, little girl, hush…it's all right, love, it will be just fine…"

"I…" she faltered, sucking in air so she could speak, "I just want to do right by my family, and I've failed!"

"Failed? What on earth are you talking about?"

"Aunt, I was supposed to be married by now, I was supposed to have made my mama a grandmother…I was supposed to have many children, be a good mother and a good wife, and I haven't done any of that!"

"And you think being married and having babies is the only way to honor them? Dear heart, even if you haven't done those things—yet—I know they must be proud of the woman you've become. And had they known Po, I'm sure—"

"That's not why I'm crying."

"Then why are you crying?"

"Auntie, I was engaged to marry someone else, someone of their choosing. I wasn't supposed to marry for love—I was supposed to learn to like my husband, learn to desire him, then learn to love him, just as Mama had learned to do these things with my Baba…love wasn't supposed to enter into it until _after_ marriage."

This caught the matriarch so off-guard that she was sure she'd be reeling hours from now. Her adopted daughter had been engaged? "At thirteen? Thirteen years old, and you were going to get married?"

Su Lin shook her head. "They were choosing someone at the time, it was still being arranged…I wasn't supposed to get married until I was eighteen. I'm twenty-five; I should have been a wife and mother by now!"

"Considering all we've been through in the past decade or so…I think your mother could understand why it's taken so long. Lets face it, running from warlords, keeping ourselves from starving or freezing to death…most of the time, we've had a lot more important things to worry about."

"I know, you think I'm being silly…" she sniffed, wiping tears away with the back of her hand. "But seeing everyone at the dinner last week, Crane and Viper so happy together, and Dalang and Tigress with little Shang…that should be me. I should have been there with a husband and son by now. I know how horrible this will sound, but I thought that Po was my last chance to have that life my mama wanted me to have, but now I've made him so angry…"

"Lets back up a bit," Wu said. "First, don't look at marriage and children as the ultimate achievement for _every_ woman. The world is changing around us, every day. Just because things were a certain way for your mother doesn't mean they will be the same for you.

"Second, I can tell you with great conviction that Po is not mad at you. He loves you."

"Then why did he leave?"

Wu didn't know to answer that. On the one hand, Po's reasoning and other behaviors were perplexing. There had to be more than one reason why he left so suddenly, and fighting bad guys and saving the day were not the reasons; granted, they were good reasons, but neither was the main reason he left. If Wu had to hazard a guess, it was that Po left because he didn't feel good enough for his significant other…an extremely irritating trait both pandas exhibited. But it wasn't the question that caught her attention the most; it was the way Su Lin had posed it. Suddenly, the young female was not sad. She looked…angry. Defiant. She looked like she demanded an answer, and she wanted it _now_.

Su Lin took in a deep breath and asked again, "Why did he leave? If he's not mad at me, and it's not something I did…why did he run away? That's what it looks like, doesn't it? I mean, I love him, and I trust him, but sometimes…I catch myself wondering if he's got another motive."

"Another motive? How do you mean?"

"I don't know…" she answered truthfully. "I wish I did, but I don't." After another long pause, the female panda sighed and stood, reaching for a clean dress. "I should get to work. I just can't sit still right now; I need to do _something_ or I'll go crazy."

Wu sighed as well, knowing exactly where she was coming from. How many times had she used action—_any_ action—to distract her from uncontrollable situations? How many times had she herself done inane housework to distract from those phenomena that were out of her hands? "Alright, dear; don't strain yourself."

"I won't. Just some sweeping, mopping, maybe a little dusting…I just can't sit still and do nothing."

The old red panda woman had listened very carefully to these last words. As she rose and left the young female to get dressed, the matriarch went over the conversation in her head. Though they had not reached the heart of the matter, they had certainly gotten somewhere. Wu was puzzled that Su Lin had never mentioned the arranged betrothal before; why would she have any reason to hide that fact? And something even more perplexing was the fact that this time Su Lin was not taking a perceived offense lying down.

Before, if someone had slighted her she would just let it slide, a habit that Mei Xing had gotten used to during her first marriage. Wu had always worried about Su Lin's passivity and how it could seriously go wrong, and often wondered if the giant panda had an ounce of moxie in her at all. But this conversation proved something that Wu had been hoping to see: Su Lin was actively fighting the situation, demanding the truth, demanding answers for Po's behavior as well as her own. Not that Wu was complaining about the sudden appearance of the girl's backbone, but she left that room wondering if perhaps a decade living as Wu Lien's adopted daughter had rubbed off on Su Lin after all…and whether or not that was a good thing.

* * *

Master Tigress was nothing if not principled. She took her kung fu training very seriously. Since hearing about the newest threat to the Valley (wherein, she wondered, why and how the Valley of Peace could be called thus, when it was constantly under attack in some way), she set out to prove she had not lost her touch after marriage and baby.

However, as much as she loved kung fu, she naturally loved her family more. She loved her husband, fights and petty disagreements aside, and she loved her son too. However, with her husband working, her usual babysitters otherwise engaged, and Shifu's concern that she be in tip-top shape…she compromised.

"Oh you are just the cutest little guy, aren't you? Yes you are…with all that fuzz and those cute little paws and…and sharp little teeth…and claws…Shang, why are you looking at me like that?"

Baby Shang was too young to know all the variations of facial expressions, and what each one meant. Had he known better, he would have recognized the look of pure cold terror behind Zeng's uneasy smile. All he knew was that Zeng had a smile on his face, and was holding up his wings…a sure signal he wanted to play. Baba always held his arms like that when they were playing. And a smile was a smile…even if Zeng's voice sounded a little shaky.

"Uh…n-no, no kitty…down, kitty…um, n-no pouncing. Pouncing bad. Pounc—GAH!"

Shang squealed and growled playfully as he ambushed him, narrowly missing the bird, but managing to catch a few molted feathers in his teeth and claws. Zeng flew up to the rafters, well out of range of the apex predator below. The palace messenger caught his breath and looked down, struggling to control his thudding heart. The tiger cub was rolling on the floor, kicking his little legs excitedly, making spit bubbles and cooing as he pawed at falling feathers.

Though he was absolutely terrified of this child that, at six months, was bigger than he was, Zeng had to concur with everyone who had met Master Tigress' son…Shang was just so damn adorable, even when doing as predators were supposed to do. He was just a playful cub who didn't know that his teeth and claws could be dangerous weapons. But that didn't make Zeng's babysitting duties any easier.

Had it really been only five minutes ago when Tigress had dropped her son off? How was he going to last all day?! He told himself he had flown to Chorh-Gom, dealt with Vachir, survived Tai Lung's escape, and tolerated the harsh weather both ways…and he'd tolerated worse since then. If he could handle all that, babysitting a baby tiger should be easy!

He blanched as he witnessed Shang falling back into a pouncing stance and eyeing him with a hungry stare. Swallowing hard, the goose whimpered, "Gods help me, where is your mother?!"

* * *

Tigress sat in meditation under the tree in outside the training hall, focusing on the rustling of the turning leaves above and the wind moving across the mountain. Her deep breathing sounded hollow at the back of her throat, the meditative breaths calming her, yet preparing her as well. This was what she did most every day, but today, her training would be different. She was waiting, waiting for the opportunity to prove herself, to prove that she was, in fact, ready to take on any threat whatsoever.

Viper had commended her on her strict regimen, even marveling how quickly she had gotten into her pre-baby shape. Crane respected her drive, as he always had. Monkey helped bring her up to speed on all the moves the Furious Five (well, Furious _Four_, during her maternity leave) had practiced and perfected during her absence. Mantis just thought she was insane for her punishing routine…and she was surprised at herself for agreeing with him.

Try as she might, having a baby had changed her body more than she was willing to admit. Did all women go through this, she wondered? She didn't like dwelling on it; in fact, she still kicked herself for asking her husband—_once_—during her pregnancy if he still found her attractive. Since when did she care? Why _should_ she care?

_You're getting off-track. Focus,_ she told herself. _Focus…_

She had started off slow, with tai chi and _taolu_ exercises, just to get back her flexibility. Then back to strength training. Then she sparred with her friends. Then it was back to the challenges inside the training hall. Now back in the swing of things, Tigress felt—perhaps rightly so—that she had never been in such good shape.

But there was only one way to find out. Though she was a master of the tiger style, there was one milestone of her training that she had not, to date, reached.

For the past week, she had spent all day sparring with each of her friends. The first day, she sparred with Crane; on the second day, she sparred with Viper; on the third day, Monkey worked with her handling of all kinds of weapons in what was certainly an impressive display of kung fu mastery; on the fourth day, she honed her skills with lightning speed and agility while fighting Mantis.

Today was the fifth day, the moment of truth. She was nervous, more nervous than the day the Dragon Warrior was chosen, more nervous than her very first battle. Today was the day she would prove that she _deserved_ her title.

Her ear flicked once to catch the soft padding of feet upon the grass, but her body was otherwise motionless. She willed her body to remain still, to appear completely relaxed, while inside she was on high alert, as taut as a wire about to snap. Her enemy came closer and closer…slowly stalking her.

Closer and closer…

The interloper moved carefully, keeping downwind.

Closer and closer…

Tigress carefully tensed and relaxed her fingers and claws, rolling her shoulders very, very slightly.

Closer and closer…

She could sense his presence; he was almost on top of her now.

Tigress took in a deep, deep breath and slowly let it out. Another deep breath, and let it out. Her attacker was less than three feet from her. The urge to strike was almost overpowering, she knew, but it took all her inner strength to stay where she was, to _will_ herself to stay still until her opponent either got too close, or made some other mistake…

Closer and closer…

He was almost there, she knew, and her predatory instincts were roaring at her to strike, to jump into action. She willed them down, for just a little bit longer…just a few more steps…

Suddenly she struck!

Striking her arm out, she grabbed onto the bamboo staff and yanked hard, bringing her assailant along with it. Somersaulting in midair, she fell into a split as the opponent swung the staff, barely missing her head. She grabbed for the staff again, missed, but swung her legs to catch him unawares. He jumped out of the way, but she used his lack of foundation to hit him, sending him back several yards. He back-flipped and landed on his feet, sliding back another foot, then caught himself, holding the staff in a defensive stance.

Tigress stared him down, arm raised over her head as she lowered herself into her battle stance. She stared right into her opponent's blue eyes and prepared herself for his comments. "How did I do, Master?"

Shifu lowered his staff, only slightly, and cast a critical eye over her. The time for brutal honesty was long past, she needed truth unlike he had ever given her. He had taught her well—granted, he hadn't taught her everything, but he had very good reasons for that—and this was a long time coming. How many times had he dared his students—especially his daughter—to attack him when he appeared defenseless? This was proof, proof that both of them needed, that Tigress was a master in her own right. She knew, and Shifu knew, that a warrior could not truly call themselves a master until they had surpassed their own master.

Which brought them to the current scene, mere hours after Tigress had challenged the red panda to the ultimate test of her abilities. This was something Oogway would never have agreed to, but Shifu knew this was absolutely necessary. Tigress had the advantage of youth and strength; Shifu had the advantage of skill and experience. Perhaps not evenly matched, but it was enough to make this battle interesting.

"You have learned your lessons well," he started. "You recalled the lessons of Master Jade Frog, who instructed to wait for the 'fly to come to you'. That was very wise. You also recalled the lesson of the swallow, who waits to hear the wind's changing course before flying."

"I have learned the philosophical lessons," Tigress summarized, "As you have taught me. But I don't believe I have ever proven their practical application."

"If you are prepared," he hesitated. "Then today will be the day you prove that." He lowered himself further into a defensive stance. "Let's begin."

Meanwhile, upon the training hall's roof, the four other members of the Furious Five were supporting their leader the best way they knew how.

"Trade you some peanuts for cinnamon dots?" Monkey asked, holding his bag of nuts in front of Mantis.

"Deal. Crane, you still have those banana chips?"

"Yup, but they're going fast."

"Almonds are still hot," Viper offered, lifting the lid off a bowl of candied almonds. Crane took one and passed it over in a bowl to Mantis, who chopped it up with his pincers to make it easier for him to eat. They watched their comrade and their master circling each other, the quartet munching away at their snacks like spectators at a fighting match…which, coincidentally, was exactly what they were.

"These are great seats. Good call, Crane," Monkey said.

"I'll say. Bird's eye view, no pun intended," said Mantis.

"So what do you think she'll do first?" Viper asked.

"Five _jiao_ says she waits for him to make the first move," Mantis nodded.

"I see your five _jiao_ and raise it by seven _fen_ says she's on the offensive—she _always_ attacks first," Crane said.

"I'll put ten _yuan_ down that she'll let Shifu attack first," Viper said. "If I know her, she'll switch it up; Shifu taught her, and he thinks Tiger style is pretty predictable. It's always offense… she'll be on the defensive, just to throw him off."

"Not happening," Mantis said whilst chewing. Pointing down to the arena, he noted, "See how she's situated herself? No way that's for defense. Shifu won't strike first; he'll wait for her to strike, like he always does."

They fell silent as the two combatants came to a sudden halt. They narrowed their eyes at each other, searching, studying, careful to give no clues to their plans. A growl rumbled deep in Tigress' throat, and…she smirked. Perhaps it would not seem so significant to the casual observer; anyone would think she was confident of her win over her elderly master. But her friends knew otherwise.

"Shifu's toast," Mantis said.

"She's _actually_ smirking at him?" Crane gasped. "Is she nuts?"

"He's not going to like that…" Monkey said with a slight tinge of worry.

Viper only smiled in triumph.

Shifu, for his part, looked completely aghast that she was so overconfident. Did she know something he didn't? Impossible, he knew. He taught her, what more could she know? But there was something teasing about the look in her eyes, which sparkled with mischievous mirth.

"I'm ready when you are, Master," she said, with a slight smile.

Shifu stood firm, waiting for her to make the first move, as she always did. But she didn't move, not a hair. This was very strange. If Tigress was intentionally switching her routine to keep him on edge, it was most certainly working. She would be unpredictable. Most people would immediately assume that, as an apex predator with a healthy temper, Tigress was already unpredictable—if not unstable—but Shifu had raised her. He knew her moods, her habits, her strengths and weaknesses. He knew that she tended to start out with quick bursts of energy then tire herself out by the end of a fight, a habit he tried to break, but how could he break a habit that was inborn in her species?

She still wasn't moving. She was watching him, waiting for him to make the first move, not her. This had to be cheating, he thought, but he knew it wasn't. she was playing with his expectations…and he wondered where she had learned to do that. He certainly hadn't taught her that.

Then she did something absolutely unforgivable: she relaxed her stance. Shifu bristled; how dare she! He had taught her better, and by the gods, he would teach her even now!

He lashed out, aiming to sweep her legs out from under her, but she leaped up and over his head, and swung her arm around at his small body. He blocked the blow, striking out with his hands. She grappled with him, careful with her footwork, matching him punch for punch, strike for strike. Shifu was giving it his all, a rookie mistake…and she knew it. They _both_ knew it was a rookie mistake, and Tigress bet that he was trying to catch her off-guard. If there was one thing she knew about her master, it was that he could be as sly as a fox.

So she kept matching blow for blow, catching his wrist only to have it slip from her palm, grabbing his elbow only to have him jerk it from her grasp. He used the momentum to throw a reverse roundhouse, which she dodged just in time.

She somersaulted over his head, kicked out and uprooted him from the ground, and punched him. He fell back, landing on his feet and skidding to a stop in the dust. Tigress lowered herself into another fighting stance, waiting for the opportune moment.

"You've had a good start, Tigress," Shifu said. "But don't think you're doing well. I know I've taught you better than this. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you're slipping."

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. The look on her face showed him just how she was affected by that little criticism. That was another of her weaknesses: she took everything personally, and that meant _everything_. The hurt, betrayal and angst that flooded her features was almost immediately replaced by one of hellish fury…and Shifu swore he heard Monkey telling Mantis, "You were right, he's dead meat."

This time Shifu wasn't ready for her onslaught. She railed into him, swiping with her paw, chopping at him with her other hand, and bringing her foot down into a drop-kick he only barely dodged. He was suddenly on the defensive, which was how he often fought—it had saved his tail on more than one occasion. It was a tactic as old as fighting itself: wear out the bigger opponent, then take them down. It had served him well. But he had been younger then, spry, not bogged down with the limp and burgeoning arthritis.

And, by the way, he was fighting Master Tigress, and Master Tigress was very, very pissed.

Not since fighting Tai Lung three years ago, and the Jiao a year later, had the red panda actually feared losing his life in a battle. Well, this wasn't technically a "_battle royale_"…but it might as well have been.

"Slipping?!" she roared. "You think I'm _slipping_?! You _trained_ me from childhood, you broke me down and built me back up! You _made_ me what I am! So if anyone is slipping its _you_!"

…What was it with his kids lately? Had he done something to anger them so much that they talked back to him like this?

Tigress didn't give him much of an opportunity to explore this further, punching him square in the chest and sending him flying back. He barely managed to keep on his feet as he skidded to a stop just shy of the wall. He had truly angered her, and the evidence of that was clear from the fury and frequency of her attacks. He had a hard time blocking each and every blow now, and he knew he wouldn't last much longer if this kept up.

He waited for her to make a mistake, and she didn't disappoint him. She struck out, extending her arm too far. She was off-balance, and he used this chance to strike at her ribs, then her hip, and swept her legs out from under her. She turned horizontally, landed in a split and jumped back up, blocking and stepping out of his way. She was not about to let him know how badly his hits had affected her, but she knew that her sudden defensive strategies were a clue.

That was what this battle really was, she realized. He had trained her to be the strongest, the fastest and most honorable fighter he'd ever trained—he had trained her to be better than Tai Lung. Tai Lung had proven himself, many times over, each time he had fought his master and won. True, she had fought vast armies, cunning assassins and dangerous bandits, but she had never beaten her master at his own game.

That said, she knew this was not a show of strength, and that this was not an exhibition of skill: it was a mind game. It was a battle of wits. The deciding factor of this battle would be who had defeated the other by outsmarting them. Tai Lung _had_ said once that Shifu had taught her—and her friends—well, but he hadn't taught her everything. _Like the nerve strike, for example_, she thought ruefully. But Shifu wasn't her only teacher now; unfortunately for Shifu, in the past three years, she had learned quite a few things from Wu Lien.

Tigress back-flipped and landed on the steps leading to the training hall, and dropped into a low battle stance. Shifu followed, and was thrown off by her quick side-swipe with her arm, and the sudden uppercut that quickly followed it. She perfected a reverse roundhouse and swift drop-kick, slamming him into the wooden walkway. Shifu had grabbed hold of her leg and grunted as he lifted her and threw her off him. She somersaulted and landed a few feet away, wincing as she landed hard on her right foot.

"Oh no!" she heard Viper gasp. No, no she wasn't going to let a twisted ankle determine the outcome of this. By the gods, she wouldn't. She jumped back up into a battle stance, this time not giving him the opportunity to brace himself. She struck with a fury of punches and kicks, completely giving in to the anger she felt.

"Maybe I haven't been clear before," Tigress said. "But let me be clear now." She punched; he blocked it and threw a punch of his own, which she dodged. "I have spent my whole life trying to be something. This is my one chance."

"Are you forgetting that you _are_ someone? And someone significant, I must say," Shifu said. "How many people can honestly say they could hold their own against the Wu Sisters, alone? How many can say they have honors from the Emperor for service against the Mongols? How many can claim the achievements you've made?"

They paused, tense and panting, staring each other down.

"But that's not enough for you," Tigress accused. "I don't need to repeat what's already been said. You know my feelings."

"I know," he said dismally. "And trust me, I know there isn't enough I can do to make up for it."

"There is one thing."

"What's that?"

"Don't let me win." She attacked. Shifu defended himself, but felt hurt—had she so little faith in him that she thought he would _let_ her win just to spare her feelings? Fine, if she didn't want this to be easy, he would make damn sure that was exactly what she got. He may not have always given her everything she wanted, but by Heaven, today he would.

He made attack after attack, hooks, uppercuts, jabs and chops, few actually making any contact on her body. The battle between master and student raged, traveling all over the training area. The spectators on the roof had to abdicate as the battle became more and more heated, each combatant furiously defending and attacking. Sweat poured from their brows, breaths escaping their lungs in rapid rasps, but no matter how fatigued they were, they continued...

"It's too close," Crane said.

"One of them has to have the advantage here," his wife said, worry etched on her pretty face as she prayed. "Please let her win, _please_ let her win..."

"She's so close," Monkey said, biting his lip.

"C'mon girl, don't give in!" Mantis quietly cheered. "You can do this!"

Tigress was too far away to hear their concerns, and too involved in the fight to pay attention. She was getting desperate. Her style was not meant for prolonged skirmishes, and she knew that. She needed to rest, but Shifu wouldn't give her that luxury. She needed to end this, and she needed to end this now.

_Give me an opening_, she prayed. _Anything._

She back-flipped off the roof and landed in a crouch on the training arena floor, straightening just as Shifu jumped off the shingles to follow her. She was waiting and ready.

The red panda gasped as she grabbed hold of his robe, swinging him over her head and slamming him down into the floor. Gasping, he staggered to stand. He flew back by the force of her next strike, rolling as his body hit the ground. Tigress stood over him, ready for to deliver the next strike.

"Enough," he gasped as he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. "Enough." He stood, wavering and wobbling a little. Tigress wagered he felt as weak and unsteady as he felt. Both of them had fought admirably, yet hard. Scrapes and abrasions covered their bodies, blood trickling from the areas where their clothes had been torn by her claws or his quick jabs. None of that took into account the number of bruises and twisted joints they were sure to have. Both were breathless, tired and looked like they had just walked away from a horrific battle.

Actually, that last description was a rather apt assumption.

Then Shifu pulled himself together and smiled, pressing his fist into his palm, and finally bowed. "Well done. I know when I am bested. I humbly admit defeat."

Tigress struggled to catch her breath as she slowly digested this sudden change. Shifu was bowing to her. Bowing. That meant...that meant...!

"I won. I defeated you."

"That you did." The red panda smiled and bowed again. "Well done, Master Tigress."

Her friends stood behind her, jittery with barely-controlled jubilation for her. Viper looked to be having the hardest time holding in her glee. Tigress turned to them, smiling tiredly and feeling weak with exhaustion, but straightened and put her fists triumphantly on her hips.

"So?" she asked with a wry smile.

"So? That's all you gotta say?" Mantis demanded.

"You want me to say something else?"

"Come on," Monkey said. "You've been out of the game for a year, and you just did something you've never been able to do before. There's gotta be something."

Tigress thought about it, and when the answer came to her, she nearly gagged at how obvious—and cliché—it sounded.

"Well?" Viper asked.

Tigress finally decided that, damn it, she was tired, and it sounded good enough considering the circumstances, and proclaimed, "I am Master Tigress..." She straightened and grinned wide and bright. "And I am _back_!"

Someone's panicked scream finally met their ears: "MASTER TIGRESS!"

Her face blanched. "Oh no..." she took off running for the bunk house.

"What's wrong?" Shifu asked.

"I forgot I left Shang with Zeng!"

The other masters tensed and shared worried looks before they too followed their triumphant leader on the mission to save the babysitter from his charge.

And so was the triumphant return of Master Tigress of the Furious Five.

* * *

Dalang's shift ended as soon as the dinner hour was over. Mr. Ping had sent him from the kitchen, up the stairs of the goose's home, to the storage pantries of the Long and Feng Café to put away pans, bowls, and dirty aprons. As he descended the stairs, the boards creaking under his weight, Dalang recalled quite vividly the amount of work they had all put into this building's construction and renovation. After Tai Lung and Po had knocked down the wall separating Ping's noodle stand from the old residence next door, carpenters had gotten to work, building in between the two houses, thus closing up that narrow alley, and opened up the walls to allow for a larger kitchen and upstairs living quarters.

The restaurant and private home was two stories, U-shaped, opening towards the south, with a moon gate similar to Ping's place opening to the public area for the diners. The former reception room became the family altar for ancestors and deities, which was kept from public eye by a "spirit wall" to allow the family members privacy. As a patron entered, they found that the wing on their left was a continuation of Ping's restaurant, serving up noodles and dim sum hot and steaming from an open bar. Opposite this wing on the first floor was the pantry for the family and the restaurant, converted from old servants' quarters.

Up the stairs were the two wings of the house, reserved for each family. Tai and Mei's room was in the western wing, Dalang and Tigress in the eastern wing. Their two rooms were right across from a family common area, which was directly above the entryway. Typically, most commoners' houses had only one story, but in this case, they got lucky. The family that had lived there before had needed—amazingly—a bigger house. The head of the household, a merchant rabbit (salt, an extremely valuable commodity, thus making him ludicrously rich), had married young, and he, his parents, and his young wife set up in this very house he had built. The entryway, where Dalang now stood, had once been the main altar room and place of worship, where the ancestral portraits hung and where the family could pray to the gods for prosperity and many sons.

Well, the trouble with rabbits…praying for many children was never necessary. The merchant and his wife had decided to "leave it up to Heaven" to see how many children they had…and according to Ping, they were at nineteen and counting.

_And I thought having __**six**__ brothers was a nightmare_, Dalang had remarked at the time. Still, it was a blessing in disguise. The merchant had found that after his parents had died and his wife had given him his sixteenth child, that he needed more space. The house was abandoned, the "for sale" sign an ironic joke, until Wu Lien came to the merchant's family with an offer. It ended up costing her so little, it should have been criminal. But Auntie was nothing if not resourceful, and as Dalang knew _quite_ well, a damn good haggler.

It had taken quite a bit of reconstruction. Bricks needed to be replaced, the walls plastered and whitewashed, load-bearing walls and foundations reinforced, the floors either refinished or completely replaced. The tiles in the courtyard were either cracked or smashed, but the local stonemasons were very avid fans of Dalang's cooking and fixed it for a fraction of their normal rate.

The second-floor rooms required the greatest overhaul, in Dalang's opinion. The walls were paper-thin, and if his experience with his wife was any indication (he recalled with a satisfied smirk), thin walls in a house for two very, ahem, _active_ couples would not do at all. They had ripped off the paneling and stuffed the walls with enough insulation to keep the place warm in winter, but also to buffer any unwanted sounds… Not that _that_ was the primary reason for replacing the insulation…

Once the floors were done and the walls repainted, the furniture was the next thing on their list. They had to literally start from scratch; Sonam had made quite a few friends amongst the carpenters and local artisans (and in fact, had joined their guild just a few months after taking up residence in the Jade Palace). For the time, however, the old snow leopard refused to get beds for either Tai Lung or Dalang.

"A new bed comes with a new bride," the one-eyed warrior had said pointedly. "Get married, get new beds." So for a good few months, both younger males were sleeping on the floor, on thin mattresses that barely provided the softness they wanted. Now, Dalang was perfectly happy marrying Tigress to begin with—the fact the marriage came with the most comfortable bed he'd ever slept in…well, it was a perk. Sharing said bed with the most beautiful and talented woman in all China was by far the _biggest_ perk.

He smirked as he remembered Sonam drawing up the plans for Tai Lung's wedding bed. "Awful pain the ass," the old leopard had growled. "I love each of you equally—hell, boy, I watched you in your younger years, you're like a son to me, too. But I don't want you to think I'm showing any favoritism…"

"You know I don't care about that—he's your flesh and blood, he deserves it more than I do," he had reasoned. He didn't care, and why should he? The things Sonam had pulled together for them more than made up for it.

Shifu too; the red panda had commissioned quite a few pieces: tables, chairs, desks, and, when it was discovered the tigers were expecting, a crib. Dalang suspected the showering of gifts was largely guilt-related. Shifu had not always treated Tigress the way she deserved, and perhaps it was her moving out of the Jade Palace for good that was the wake-up call the master needed. When all was said and done, though, Dalang couldn't hate him for it. Dalang had screwed up, plenty of times, and had ruined perfectly good relationships and burned a few bridges, all of which he regretted. But there was one bridge in particular that he felt was shaky, and was worried about losing that one connection that had literally saved his life…

And said connection was lightly fanning herself as she gazed up at the ancestral portrait of Dalang's beloved mother, Ming Hua. Wu Lien turned and spotted the tiger coming towards her, then cocked her head to the altar. "I came to pay my respects. I had some extra incense lying around and well…though I know you take such good care of her and all…"

Dalang worried his lip. Ever since Shen's death, somehow their relationship had become particularly distant. Wu had never been truly open with him, and the feeling was mutual. Sonam and Tai Lung eventually told him the whole story as they understood it, and to a point, the tiger understood; it explained a lot of things. Wu's apparent distance was more likely due to her feelings about Ming Hua, not him.

The red panda woman turned back to the altar, staring at the urn beneath the portrait. "She should have been buried."

"It's lucky I found her ashes at all," he pointed out, but didn't elaborate. "I didn't think Shen was…was so sentimental."

"I didn't think he loved her."

"If he carried her ashes with him everywhere he went, maybe he did. Had a hell of a way of showing it."

"Do you think she loved him?" Wu asked. Dalang knew where this was going. She was still burned by Ming's apparent betrayal…so the tiger decided the time was right to set things straight.

"Mom hated him. Hated, loathed, despised, snapped at him every chance she got…whenever we weren't around, of course. She didn't want us to know how bad her marriage was. Shang told me a lot about it later, after she died."

"I thought as much," she sighed. "She didn't deserve what fate gave her. You didn't deserve what happened to you."

"I'm slowly making my peace with that," he said, his eyes scanning the altar. "I still don't regret killing my uncle and Huang; it was either them or me. I do regret hurting all those ex-girlfriends, though."

"That is hardly your fault; there were extenuating circumstances."

"I know that. But maybe it's easier for me to take it all; you know how Su Lin believes all things happen for a reason?"

She nodded, "Of course."

He shrugged his shoulders and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Well, the way I look at it, there's a reason I married Tigress instead of one of those girls. There's a reason I was born. There's a good reason why Mom married Shen…"

"If she hadn't, neither you nor Shang would have been born," she finished. Her green eyes roved over to another portrait, hanging next to Ming Hua's. Jiao Shang the Elder gazed peacefully from the ink and paint façade of his ancestor portrait, an expression Dalang remembered so very infrequently from the time they had together. Someday, Wu Lien knew, Shang the Younger would come to know the whole story…or at least all he needed to know. "I'm sure your brother would be honored to know you named your son after him."

Dalang gave her a small smile, "Probably. I'm hesitant to hope that he turn out like his uncle…"

She knew exactly what he meant. "Oh heavens no, I wouldn't wish the Dragon Rage on my worst enemy…poor man," she shook her head. "Was it as bad as I fear?"

"Worse—he hid it well." He closed his eyes as he reviewed the memories. "I hardly noticed the problem until he let a few things slip: his hands would shake; he'd vomit a lot after battles, sometimes cough up blood; wouldn't be able to eat or sleep. All those myths about it are true. Looking back on it, Feng did Shang a favor. He passed more peacefully than if he'd surrendered to the Rage; and he probably wouldn't have lived much longer anyway. It hurts, knowing he's gone, and I miss him a whole lot, and I keep asking myself why it was him, and not me—I mean, I got shot in the _back_ for hell's sake. But…part of me is glad he's not suffering anymore."

"Perhaps I should be glad for Ming, too," Wu said. "Perhaps she's with Nima—that brings me peace."

"'Cause we sure as hell know Shen's not gonna be up there with her."

"Amen."

Dalang sighed and stepped forward, picking up two sticks of incense and lighting them, placing them before the portraits. He picked up a third and lit it, placing it in front of a wooden tablet bearing only the words "honored parents"; it was the only way Tigress had to honor her ancestors. Traditionally, wives became members of the husbands' family, but Tigress still felt the need to honor those people who probably were amongst the spirits now. Whoever they were, wherever they were, Dalang felt he should honor them, too.

Wu Lien cleared her throat. "I also came to check on the girls, especially Su Lin."

"You noticed it too, huh?"

The old red panda woman snapped her fan shut. "She's been despondent since Po left. She tries hiding it, by throwing herself headfirst into her work—we know her, we know that's how she is."

"She hasn't said anything to me, or to Tigress and Mei, as far as I know," he confessed. "Though maybe the girls aren't saying anything because they promised they wouldn't, I don't know. I don't know how to talk to her about it. I'm as worried for Po and Tai as she is."

"Oh thank goodness, I'm glad I'm not the only one," Wu said. "It does us no good not knowing who it is they've gone to fight…"

Dalang swallowed hard, flexing and clenching his hands, his ear ticking anxiously. Then he said, "What if—hypothetically—we actually _do_ know this guy?"

Wu froze, giving him a stern look. Though Dalang didn't know it, she had him right where she wanted him. "What are you saying, exactly?"

"Nothing," he covered. "Nothing, just a hypothetical question."

The old woman gave him a hard look. "I think you _do_ know."

"I don't, I really don't," he affirmed. He defended himself when she glared, "Honest! All I've got is a suspicion..."

"And if you have a suspicion," she stared hard, "It would behoove you to share it with us…"

"Look," he growled in warning, "The likelihood of _any_ of those guys still being alive is slim to none. Hell, I was _lucky_ to be pardoned! Those mercenaries? Not so much. Trust me, if the Emperor and all the assassins in China are as thorough as they say, there isn't a single Jiao left alive…" he sighed. "Except me."

"But it has to be _someone_," Wu said. "Someone _you_ know."

"Blue eyes aren't exactly unique," he pointed out. "If that's all you're going on, I can name fifty guys easily…and they're all dead."

Wu stared him down, knowing how her sharp-eyed glare was affecting him. The female red panda knew his weaknesses better than any other living person; she had seen that tiger at his lowest point, stripped of all pretenses and shown him for who he really was. She had torn him down, and built him back up into the man that stood before her. She had seen sides of him that no one ever had or ever would see again, and it was that knowledge that unnerved him so much.

She turned to leave. "You don't have to tell me, young man. I think we both know who our suspect is."

Dalang stayed stoically silent, his back turned to her. Then he felt a violent shiver when she added,

"And if there is even the slightest chance of that beast still being alive, may Heaven have mercy on us all…and especially you."

* * *

Lord White Wolf was not a patient man. It made his newest recruit nervous, the way the snow-furred lupine warlord ticked his ear in annoyance, his brow heavy with irritation. The leader of the pack cast his yellow gaze over at the unfortunate lackey and growled, "_Well_? Where is he?"

Lang shuddered under his fur and gulped. "He said he'd be here…maybe he made a wrong turn?"

"If he's not here in five minutes, it's your hide; not enough to cover even _a fraction_ of your debt, you mangy little worm."

"Milord, I did as you asked; I promise, you won't be disappointed…"

"I better not—" the warlord was cut off when the door to their headquarters slammed open. The guards didn't even have time to react before they were laid low, knocked senseless by a vicious swing from the cloaked, hooded animal in the doorway. Lang took a step back, making sure he was as far away as possible…at least two paces behind his master.

White Wolf stared in surprise, but his brows furrowed when he tried to discern the visitor's species. When the Half Dozen wolves came as backup, the interloper raised his paws in a peaceful gesture, saying congenially in a thick accent, "Is good, boys, is good. Vant no trouble, am only here on…business…"

Lang bit his lip.

The assassin had arrived.

White Wolf stared a moment longer, then snapped his fingers, calling his men to stand down. "You are the assassin my servant speaks so highly of?"

"He not tell you my name? Ah," the cat chuckled, lowering his hood. "Is no surprise…you probably not believe if he say, _da_?"

Much to Lang's surprise, White Wolf jumped up, cursing loudly as he backed away from the Amur leopard. Then without warning, he rounded on his subordinate and viciously slapped him. "You _IDIOT_! Do you know who that is?!"

Lang cowered, and nodded. "Y-you said you wanted the best…"

"The best; the _best_?! He is the _worst_, you stupid little sh—"

"Naow, naow," the leopard said, stepping in between them, a cold smile on his black lips. "Is no need for that. He is good kid, smart, one I vould keep around, yes? He vent to place you tell him to go, he ask for best, and here I am. So…Vite Volf, vas it? Ve haff contract, yes?"

"Forget it!" the warlord spat. "I know better than to make deals with you!"

"You vant Valley of Peace or no?" the leopard asked disinterestedly, buffing his black claws on his tunic. "I can give it to you, and heads of panda and snow leopard…"

"You ask too much. I've heard of you, and I know all about you…" the warlord paused, swallowed hard and fought to still his quaking body as his lips and teeth formed the strange name, "…Asmodei Koshchei."

The effect was immediate. The Half Dozen and the other guards collectively gasped and recoiled as if the Amur leopard carried the plague. But the leopard—Asmodei Koshchei, the dreaded Demon of the North—just smiled, his blue-green eyes shining, crinkling up with mirth. "So, you haff heard of my…reputation? You haff heard the gossip?"

"That's no gossip…" the warlord glared, but the leopard could easily see the fear in his eyes. "You're legendary. You fought by the side of Jiao Shen for years, served as his personal assassin until he got spooked and tried to have you killed. You've killed hundreds over the years…some say you killed your own mother because she gave you a bad look…"

"Last part _is_ gossip," the leopard said with a dismissive wave. "I cut out her tongue because she vas annoying. Nag, nag, nag, nag, _nag_, vit the nagging, _alvays_! Silent her, so she not nag more. Vas quietest night sleep of my life."

"Get out," the warlord growled. "You're not welcome here."

"Not velcome?" The leopard looked positively crestfallen, then indicated Lang. "After velcome smallish-type volf give me? The good company, good conversation? He make me feel most velcome…"

Lang pleaded with his eyes, _don't do it, don't back me up…_

"…Must be most fortunate to haff such good help."

"I'll kill the little bastard," the warlord snarled, turning on his subordinate. "Stupid, ignorant little—"

The Amur leopard struck out, wrapping his large paw around the warlord's throat as he slammed him against the far wall. "Naow, naow…is any vay to speak to employee?"

"He's not…_gurk!_...an employee…" White Wolf gurgled, the leopard's paw crushing his windpipe.

"I'm a slave," Lang said quietly, holding eye contact with the leopard. Much to his surprise, the leopard looked sympathetic. "I owe him a great debt."

"Debt?" the leopard asked. "How much?"

Lang swallowed the lump in his throat as he related the obscene sum, "One thousand _yuan_…"

"Hmm." Koshchei thought it over, his eyes flicking from Lang to White Wolf and back. "You know easiest vay to get rid of debt?"

"Get rich quick?"

The leopard chuckled at the cheeky answer and pointed at him. "You, I like—make me laugh, alvays. _Nyet_, best vay to erase debt…"

White Wolf's and Lang's eyes widened simultaneously when the leopard sank his bare claws between the warlord's ribs, then ripped right through the flesh, exposing the guts. The warlord's paws reached up to clutch the leopard's hand as Koshchei stepped away to survey his work. As the older wolf crumbled over, thick blood and innards spilling on the floor, the Amur leopard turned to the young wolf, wiping the blood off on the warlord's back,

"Easiest vay to erase debt…is erase source. Is good lesson to learn. Now come, ve go."

Lang did a double-take, the color drained from his face from the awful spectacle of his employer dying a slow, agonizing death. "W-w-what? Go?"

Koshchei glanced at him over his broad shoulder. "Debt is gone; vere you go naow? Come, I give vork. You all," he motioned to the soon-to-be-late warlord's half dozen goons. "Velcome to come—rewards much good."

The other wolves glanced at each other, until they reached a general consensus (i.e., Zi Hao bullied them into it with a sharp glare) and fell in line behind the leopard; any kind of income was a good income…even if your boss was Asmodei Koshchei. But Lang remembered the leopard's promise: _vhen I kill you, you vill face me, you vill be armed._

Well, perhaps not the most encouraging words, but Lang suspected that if he kept his wits about him—and made a point to never carry a weapon—he'd probably come out of this alive. He and the other wolves—Zi Hao, Tan Lan, Yu Wang, Xi Jiu, Lan Duo, Nu Bao, and Lang himself—followed the leopard out the door like puppies on a leash. Koshchei didn't bother to look back at them.

"Um…where are we going?" Lang asked.

"To Valley of Peace," the leopard answered.

"But, why bother killing the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung? You're not going to get paid for it…"

Though he couldn't see it, Lang knew that Koshchei was smiling. "I tell you…I enjoy challenge."

* * *

A/N: Now we can finally put a name to a face. Cookies for anyone who can figure out the mythological basis of Koshchei's name. (First name should be easy, but look to Slavic mythology for the surname).

Apologies for the so-so battle in the middle of this chapter. Like I said, much of this was written from my local library, and you wouldn't believe how distracting a library can be on a Saturday afternoon. If there are errors (and there likely are; no one's perfect), I'll go back and fix them when I get the opportunity. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this; it was a long time in the making. Please read and review!


	7. Chapter 7: Master Sun Bear

Sorry for taking so long to update. I gave you all a nice long chapter to make up for it…conveniently posted on Valentine's day and the first day of the Year of the Tiger. Sweet.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, or any of its characters. I own the OCs, so please don't use them without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 7: Master Sun Bear

* * *

Neither Po nor Tai Lung were aware that they had more than just assassins after them. The knowledge they were also wanted by the Imperial army was completely unknown to them…at least when they first left. Po fingered the note the guard at the Thread of Hope had slipped him under his teacup, feeling his nerves jumbling together again. He knew his reputation as the Dragon Warrior certainly preceded him, but he had no idea that people who had never even met him felt so strongly about him. Those guards were probably risking their jobs—perhaps even their lives—to help him. Though Tai Lung had served time, Po figured he knew nothing about the ways of outlaws (though he knew more than the panda did, certainly). But the fact the snow leopard had not picked up on the jargon he'd exchanged with the Wu Sisters said enough: the Master of the Thousand Scrolls was no crook.

The Outlaw Code, as mapped out in the note, was not especially clever, nor was it original, but it served its purpose. Outlaws of any sort—bandits, assassins, and runaways—were referred to as "pilgrims", and a "pilgrimage" was their flight to freedom, or any place where they could lay low (in a "temple") until the heat died down. The guards' advice in the note was to pretend to be outlaws, and they would be safe amongst those of ill-refute. Should they encounter any officials of the Emperor, they were to call themselves pilgrims as well. Hardly anyone bothered those on a "spiritual journey", even if that journey was leading them away from punishment…

The Wu Sisters, of course, knew the code very well; they had been terrorizing China and its warlords and high-ranking nobles for over a decade. Though they had never come near enough to the Valley of Peace (perhaps for fear of the kung fu masters that lived there), their reputation far preceded them. Still, for scourges and bloodthirsty harpies…they didn't seem that bad. Wu Zhu particularly seemed like an open, cheerful individual, if not mischievous…and perhaps a little flighty; Wu Jiang was more business-like, as in, the slightest insult could find you on the business end of one of her weapons; and Wu Tian was sleek, seductive, and sly…and he wasn't sure that was entirely a bad thing. Somehow, the panda couldn't shake the feeling he had met them somewhere before, because their personalities, their mannerisms, seemed all too familiar somehow. But he still had to smirk at their names and respective meanings. Tian was "sweet"; Jiang was as spicy as "ginger"; Zhu was a "precious pearl". Sugar, spice and everything nice…that's what _those_ little girls were made of.

Tai Lung seemed to find that funny, too. "I appreciate their parents had a sense of humor," he smirked. "Not sure I'd do that if I had three daughters."

"What if you had three boys?"

"Are you kidding? Snips, Snails, and Puppy dog tails? They'd kill me in my sleep…and if _they_ didn't, Mei Xing probably would."

Remarkably true to Wu Jiang's word, within a mile of the Xiao Tou Inn was a massive red sandstone gate nestled between the steep slopes of a deep ravine. On either side of the narrow gorge, the inclines jutted up at seventy-five degree angles, with loose rocks and gravel making up the majority of it. Surely, they were beginning to suspect, there was a damn good reason so few people ventured on this road.

"I hope it doesn't rain," Po said. "Or we'd be dead."

"Who says we need rain to make that slope fall?" Tai Lung said, eyeing the ravine walls with similar anxiety. "I don't know about you, mate, but the sooner we're out of here, the better."

It took them the better part of the day to make it through the ravine. By nightfall, the thin gorge had settled into a larger valley with a small farming village. A farmer was kind enough to let them stay the night in his barn, and Po and Tai Lung were so exhausted from the arduous trek and paralyzing fear of rock slides that they fell in two large heaps on fresh beds of straw. By morning, the farmer's wife—a sweet white-wooled ewe—gave them a hearty meal and some provisions to last them until Yunnan. Fully rested, they continued on along the Red Bird Pass, finding that the majority of the way took them through steep, craggy mountains, along thin roads that barely had enough room for two men to march shoulder-to-shoulder.

Northern Guizhou was as arduous as Tai Lung had predicted. Yunnan was slightly worse. But as hard as taking the less-beaten path was, both of them were rather amazed at their luck. It should have taken two weeks to get from the Valley of Peace to the Phoenix Temple. At the rate they were going, they might only be another couple days before they got there.

They passed over the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau, the area's rolling hills and deep gorges carved by raging rivers millennia ago granting it an indescribable beauty. In these gorges, Po routinely pointed out lines in the rock of brilliant reds, rusty browns and golden yellow, as if ribbons had frozen in with the stone back when the world began. The mountains' tall majesties, variably slate grey, lapis blue and rich violet depending on the time of day and the distance, lent their own beauty and breath-taking vistas. Snow had already accumulated of many of these peaks, giving them the look of sleeping, white-haired giants, crouched shivering in the cold.

They stopped in Anshun; it was a deviation from their path, but neither of them wanted to miss the opportunity to see Huanggoushou, the largest waterfall in all of China. They heard the falls even before they reached the village by its banks, and throughout the small fishing village, over all the hustle and bustle, was the roaring of rushing water. They bought more provisions for the remainder of their trip and feasted on the charity of the fishermen, who granted them the freshest perch they had ever had. They set up camp near the falls, lost in the massive majesty of the mighty river, the thousands of gallons of water pouring over the edge, leaving rainbows and fine mists that soothed their tired, aching bodies. Po got a chance to really study Tai Lung, and saw to his amazement that the snow leopard looked so serene, just from watching the falls.

"I think that's the most relaxed I've seen you since after the Jiao War," Po told him.

The snow leopard's ear ticked up when the panda spoke, and for a long moment, he didn't know what to say. Finally, he sighed and said, "I've had a lot on my mind. So much has changed in three years…I suppose after two decades of constancy and routine, having so many possibilities opening up like this is a bit overwhelming."

"How's that?"

"You know; I told you, once, how I felt about it. All my life, until you defeated me, I had tried to become the Dragon Warrior, but I never planned past that. I never thought of getting married, or having a career, or even becoming a father. When I went to prison, those things just stopped being priorities, and now that they happened, and _are_ happening…it's overwhelming. It happened so fast. I don't think it really hit me that my life had changed so much until I woke up one morning and realized my wife had started to show…five months along, and there it was…our baby."

He stared into the mists and continued on in a disembodied way. "I never stopped to think about it. But I don't regret it. How could I? Mei Xing is the best thing that could have happened to me—I couldn't ask for a better woman to call my wife. I couldn't ask for a better career—I don't think anything else would give me such peace; I can see where your father is coming from," he said with a small smile. "Making other people happy makes him happy, and the best way he knows to make people happy is to give them good food. I _have_ that ability to make people happy, and that's…that's comforting."

"But you still feel like something's missing," Po guessed.

"Wouldn't you?" the snow leopard asked rhetorically. "True, you were raised with lower expectations than I had—"

"No, you were raised with _Shifu's_ expectations, not your own."

"There's no difference."

"There's a heck of a difference—all you wanted from your adopted dad was his support and his love, and you thought the only way to do that was to become what _he_ wanted you to be, not what _you_ wanted to be…just like me."

Tai Lung realized—and with extreme guilt—exactly what Po was saying. "So…so you _know_ that Mr. Ping isn't…?"

"Isn't what?" the panda had a quizzical look on his face.

Tai Lung bit his tongue. Did he really _not_ know? Did he have no idea that Mr. Ping wasn't…wasn't his real father? Well, how could he _not_ know? That was the question the snow leopard had asked. He knew when he was a young child that Shifu wasn't his biological father, and while that had been a painful realization that—for one reason or another—his real family had not wanted him, it was even more painful in the cub's childish reasoning that he had _trusted_ his baba to tell him the truth, and who had instead been feeding him lies. Years of hindsight and soul-searching proved that this thinking was flat-out wrong: Shifu kept acting like the snow leopard's father, because he loved his adopted son too much to let him think anything else. And perhaps for the same reasons, Mr. Ping kept up the charade.

Though now, looking at Po…he couldn't do it. Tai Lung could not—and would not—be the one to deliver that news. After all, it was impossible for a goose to beget a panda, just as it was impossible for a red panda to beget a snow leopard. Despite Oogway's steadfast belief that "nothing is impossible"…Tai Lung had to disagree. There wasn't a way in heaven or on earth that a bird and a mammal could be directly related. But as long as Po was blissfully ignorant of that, then Tai Lung could be happy.

"Isn't what?" Po repeated.

Tai Lung thought fast, and was amazed—and slightly worried—at how fast he came up with a good lie. "…That he isn't as supportive as he could be. Nothing against your father!" he said quickly. "He's a wonderful person, and hell, he makes _me_ feel like I'm his own flesh and blood! But panda, I get the feeling that—I mean, he's proud of you, I'm sure—but he still wishes that…"

"…That I'd follow in his footsteps and be a noodle chef," Po said, dejected. He picked up a smooth river stone and turned it over in his hand. "Yeah, I figured as much."

"Po, he still loves you."

"Yeah, I know he does, but…is it wrong for me to still want to make him happy, even if what makes him happy isn't what makes _me_ happy?"

"Erm…" the snow leopard paused. "Given my history, I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that…"

"So short answer: yes."

"No, or maybe…I don't know. I mean," he sighed, trying to formulate the words. "We all know by now that the reason I wanted the Dragon Scroll was because _Shifu_ wanted it; I had a better chance of becoming the ultimate warrior than he did. And if I became the Dragon Warrior, I could be a son he could be proud of. And I wanted something solid, something big, something that he could be proud of." He chuckled ironically, "And now I'm a chef."

"And you make some kick-ass crab wontons," Po pointed out. "Even Dalang is jealous of that!"

Tai Lung smugly buffed his claws on his chest. "Well, I don't like to brag…"

Po snorted.

They laughed then simultaneously sighed and stared at the falls, slowly falling into a meditative state just by watching the crashing waters against the rocks at the bottom. After a while, Po got up to wash his bowl out in the river, leaving his friend to his thoughts. Kneeling at the water's edge, the panda started scrubbing to get the dried rice and other particles off the lacquered bowl, but as he poured the remaining water out, he noticed something rippling in the rushing waters. There was a flash of something, like the silvery sheen of fishes' scales, then a sinuous shape coursing through the river. He thought it had to be his imagination, or a misidentification. It couldn't be what he thought it was…could it?

His stomach suddenly growled, and it wasn't from hunger. _Bad fish_, he thought. _**Something's**__ not agreeing with me…'cause I coulda sworn…_

No. No, they were myth, weren't they?

"Panda, you all right?" Tai Lung called out to him.

Po shook himself out of it and turned back. "Yeah, yeah, I think so…"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah…I guess I'm just a little tired."

Tai Lung looked up at the sky and noticed how late it was getting. "Then get some rest I'll take first watch…"

They quickly finished eating, doused their fire, and camped for the night. At daybreak, they were already well on their way to Yunnan.

When they passed over into Yunnan, they quickly discovered that one of Mei Xing's more memorable sayings was all too true about her home province: "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes" (she had also mentioned something about mosquitoes being big enough to make a meal out of…which Tai Lung hoped she was joking about). Within an hour, the skies opened up and poured as much rain as the Huanggoushou Waterfall probably deposited in a day. But they trekked onward, despite the rain, then the sudden hot sun, then quick cloud cover, and finally camped for the night when they discovered a cruel wind biting at their damp clothes. By morning, there was frost on the ground, and they griped about the "crazy weather" and the frigid morning temperatures. An hour or so after breaking camp, not only was it warm and sunny again, but they found themselves standing in front of a sign that read: "Welcome to Sichuan".

"How'd we get here so fast?" Po asked. "It should've taken us five days from start to finish!"

Tai Lung shook his head in wonderment. "I haven't the foggiest."

They crossed into Sichuan. Just as the Wu Sisters had said, the southern part of the Sichuan province was flat and rife with life. They passed fields of rice and grain, orchards overflowing with their ripened bounty, and always a friendly face. Some farmers, busy with their harvest and preparations for winter, handed them fruits and vegetables as they passed, but for the most part avoided them. Occasionally, they encountered characters on their route who certainly looked like outlaws; neither party said anything to the other, only offering curt nods in acknowledgment; the silent agreement was there: _we didn't see anything if you didn't_. It took them one and a half days to cross Southern Sichuan, even after stopping to view the Giant Buddha of Leshan, a massive statue said to have been carved right out of the cliff face by a blind monk.

They followed the border around northwestern Yunnan for a day, then found to their amazement that less than a week after crossing the Thread of Hope, they were standing upon the Tibetan plateau…and stretching before them, jutting up into impressive spikes that touched the floor of Heaven, stood the Himalayan range.

"Did it really just take us a week to get here?" Po asked, mesmerized by the awesome sight of snow-capped mountains rising like sentinels above the plain of golden grasses. Not even being near the mountain, they found the air much thinner here, and their breaths turned to fog in front of their faces. To Po's amazement, even Tai Lung was taken aback by what he was seeing.

"Not even Mongolia's mountains can compare," he breathed. Po chanced a glance towards him; he hadn't expected the snow leopard to look happy at the memory of Mongolia, but maybe…maybe when he had escaped prison, he had taken his time to enjoy nature's wonders, just as he had on this trip. Maybe the _real_ reason it had taken nearly a week or so for Tai Lung to make it to the Valley of Peace from Chorh-Gom was that he had periodically stopped to enjoy the sights and exquisite freedom he had been denied for two decades. Despite the time constraints and the other stresses they were under, it looked like his friend was actually enjoying himself.

"Think you'll bring your kids out here someday?" the panda asked. He bit his tongue when the snow leopard frowned slightly, reminded of what he had left behind back home…then he smiled.

"I'd like that. You know, I never got much of a chance to see China before; it was always work, work, work... Oogway and Shifu went everywhere, all over the place, fighting enemies and great battles, yet I always had to stay home. The farthest I ever went was Hubei…well, at least before Chorh-Gom, anyway…" he paused, then nodded. "Yes, I'd like my children to travel. It would do them a world of good, I think." With that, they continued on.

There was frost on the ground here already; it would likely snow within a month. Wu Lien had warned them of the high elevation and the cold climate. Apparently frost covered the ground six months out of every year. The land was little more than arid steppes, and the lakes and few rivers they encountered were mostly brackish.

The further they went into the interior, the more people they saw. Then, to their relief, they found road signs…which were, unfortunately, written in Tibetan. They rested and waited for someone to pass them to enquire which direction the Phoenix Mountain was. A passing vagabond politely pointed their way, then left the two warriors to their own devices. Not too long later, they came upon another red sandstone gate, exactly like the one at the beginning of the Red Bird Pass.

They shared a grin. They'd made excellent time—better than if they had taken the Bing Yuan Road—and now were exactly where they needed to be. Below the gate, in a shallow valley, was a small village of hovels and huts, sitting like eggs in a nest at the foot of a steep mountain of red rock, whose pinnacle was hidden behind heavy blankets of clouds, mist and snow. But judging by the reddish soil and the numerous carvings of long-tailed pheasant-like birds in various rocks and lone trees, there was no denying they had made it to the Phoenix Mountain.

"Why would the Wu Sisters lie about it existing, though?" Po wondered.

"Because they're the _Wu Sisters_?" Tai Lung offered. "Come on, I want to get this over with. Maybe some farmer or another will let us crash in their barn again…"

Unfortunately, they weren't able to make it to the village by nightfall. Instead, they opted for sleeping in a cave on the outskirts of the village, which was a truly miserable experience. It was noticeably colder here, and the constant drip-drip-drip of water in the various corners of the cave did little to aid their quest for sleep. By morning, they were still tired, sore, and miserable as they finally entered the village.

Whatever Po was hoping for when they finally reached the Phoenix Mountain, they both got more than he ever expected. When they reached the village at dawn, locals, mistaking the pair for wandering monks, gladly gave them food and money, which they tried unsuccessfully to decline. Each denial was taken as modesty, which was thus rewarded twofold.

"Can't these people take a hint?" Tai Lung griped, passing off a basket of hard-boiled eggs to some hungry-looking children. "How could they mistake us for monks? Even after we told them we're _not_?"

"Give it a rest, bud," Po said, rolling his eyes. "At least they were nice enough to point us to the path to the temple…"

They stopped just shy of a carnelian-red moon gate, then gazed up a stairway that went up a steep incline and disappeared into the thick mists. Through the vaporous veil, an unpaved path meandered like a serpent through rocks and boulders, straight to the top, where, just barely visible through the misty peak, a red building stood precariously perched at the pinnacle. The steepness of the slope alone should have been daunting enough, but the rest of the way was fraught with jagged rocks, and heavy boulders that looked ready to topple over onto an unsuspecting traveler. Besides that, thick mists covered the rocks and disguised the path, which probably held more dangers than they could see.

It was at that moment Tai Lung uttered the famous last words: "It doesn't look that hard to climb. How bad could it be?"

* * *

Hours after they began their ascent up the mountain, Tai Lung was long past starting to regret his words. At about sundown, the pair dragged themselves up the slope, panting and perspiring from the climb in such thin air. Tai Lung's claws dug deep into the rock, his muscles straining from lack of oxygen. He paused to catch his breath while he waited for Po, who was lagging a good few yards behind him, further down the steep incline.

"How bad could it be, he says," Po breathlessly griped when he finally caught up to the snow leopard. "It isn't that far, he says…it took us all day to get here!"

Tai Lung was breathing about as hard as the panda was, his hands on his hips as he took deep breaths to ease the dizziness from the altitude. "Alright, so I was wrong," he admitted breathlessly. "I'm mortal, mortals can be wrong…Gods, growing up in the Valley spoiled me…"

"I was about to say," Po said, huffing and puffing. "Your lungs should be adapted to this kinda weather."

"Yes, well, not even the mountain Chorh-Gom was built on was this tall…" he huffed. "Now where the bleeding hell is this monastery? Can't see a bloody thing through this fog…" then he stopped, looking up the slope as the mists parted to reveal their hidden treasure.

A large red-walled edifice jutted out from the mountain, as if carved from the very rock itself. Blue clay roof tiles adorned the red sandstone walls, lined with prayers in Tibetan script in golden-yellow paint. Multi-colored prayer flags flapped in the mountain winds, which whistled through the jagged peaks, sounding ominously like ghosts' wails. A seven-layer pagoda jutted up from the middle of the complex, casting a long shadow over the path ahead, which had turned from dirt road to paved hexagonal tiles once again, remarkably clear of dirt and dust despite the harsh winds. From behind the walls came unmistakable sounds of music, chanting and drums, and the tinkling of prayer bells. And before them, only a few yards up the slope, stood two large double-doors, brilliantly painted in reds, oranges and yellows, the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes of a great pyre, its head held high and wings outstretched as it soared above the destruction that gave it life.

"Looks like the place," Po remarked offhandedly.

Tai Lung snorted at the understatement as the pair stared up at the impressive converted fortress. "Hardly looks like a temple, though," he remarked.

"Well, wasn't Sun Bear a mighty warrior before doing the whole monk thing? Maybe this is where he set up shop before he retired?"

"I'm not one to believe that one 'retires' from the warrior's lifestyle."

"I don't think so either," Po said as they started to climb the steep path. "Your dad didn't retire—and I don't think _you_ ever will."

Tai Lung helped the panda along the best he could. The leopard's large paws served him perfectly as he struggled to keep upright on the steep, gravelly path. "Would it surprise you to hear I've actually considered it?"

Po stumbled a bit on the loose gravel, then glanced at his friend. "You? Retiring? But…kung fu is your life!"

"Kung fu _was_ my life," he said dejectedly. "I've already spoken to Mei Xing about it…"

"Does she agree with you?"

Tai Lung sighed, offering his hand to the still-stumbling bear. "She seems to think I shouldn't give up on something I've known my whole life…like I'm abandoning it, throwing away all I've learned."

"But you're not," Po said, finally standing straight and climbing the path side-by-side with the snow leopard. "You still abide by the morals of it…but it sounds like you don't want to fight ever again."

"Exactly."

"So why did you even come on this journey?"

Tai Lung paused, clearly running over the conflicting thoughts in his head. When he finally spoke, his answer surprised the panda: "I came to find out how to protect the ones I love, obviously. But I suppose I also came to find my purpose. Maybe this is a cheap shot at humility, or maybe this can provide the answers I want. Auntie put it best, I think: I know _who_ I am, because I know where I came from, and that's half of one's identity. I just don't know the other half."

"What would the other half be, though?" Po wondered. "I was raised to think that your family _was_ your identity."

"Perhaps, as we are definitively _not_ normal people, you and I have something lacking?"

"What could we be lacking? We have everything we want: a home, roof over our heads, food on the table, friends and family who love us…we have everything anyone could ever want!"

"True…but do we have everything we _need_?" The snow leopard let this sink in before they reached the large gates of the monastery. He sighed, "I don't mean to be difficult, you know that. Knowing my family, my ancestors, and where I come from…that means more to me than you'll ever know. Had I been the Dragon Warrior, my identity as a man would have been complete. As Shifu once put it, 'a man is not truly a man until he knows who he is'."

"So…you're saying our stay here will tell you who you are?" Po asked.

Tai Lung shrugged. "Shifu seemed to believe my destiny waits behind these walls," he said, looking up to the battlements. "The Dragon Scroll was not my destiny…but maybe this new scroll is. I've got too many questions about it, about these new…abilities, whatever they are; I intend to find out. I know you're as curious about the Dragon Warrior's full abilities as I am to know the Phoenix Warrior's."

"Well yeah, _duh_," the panda rolled his eyes. "Would've been helpful if, y'know, Oogway'd written down something."

"Yes, well," the snow leopard returned the gesture, "He had a history of being _almost_ helpful. Now let's get inside before we freeze."

"You realize you're a _snow_ leopard, right?" Po asked.

Tai Lung grumbled. "Shut up."

Then he pounded on the gong hanging by the doors. The deep ringing echoed off the jagged peaks, the last tremors dying on the wind. Tai Lung stepped back and stood next to Po, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Nearly an hour had passed, and the sun was quickly setting. To say Tai Lung was irritated could go without saying. But even Po, who was known for his greater reserves of patience, was aggravated. "Okay, are they all deaf? People in _Heilongjiang_ could've heard that gong!"

"So ring it again," the snow leopard snapped. "I'm amazed you lasted this long…"

"This coming from the guy with no patience whatsoever?"

"I'm better than Mantis, grant me that."

"Not by much," Po muttered.

"I heard that!"

Po slammed the gong again. They waited until the last plaintive note had fallen silent before sharing another look. Nothing. Not a single movement to suggest that anyone had heard them, or that anyone inside the monastery was coming to answer the door. Now they were incredibly irritated. Drawing on a silent agreement, Tai Lung rang the gong again, and Po followed soon after. By the time Tai Lung was raising his fist to ring the gong a fifth time, a face peeked over the battlements and shouted angrily at them.

The face—a canine monk in orange robes—glared down at the pair and snapped, "What do you want?!"

"Let us in!" Po called.

"What's the password?" the monk on the other side demanded.

"Let us in, gods-damn it!" Tai Lung snapped.

The monk pointed to a jar by the door. "That will be three _fen_."

Tai Lung narrowed his eyes at the jar, then looked at the monk quizzically. "…What?"

"Three _fen_—put three _fen_ in the jar."

"Why?"

Po cleared his throat and pointed at the sign above the jar. Tai Lung froze, not sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. In unobtrusive writing—suitable for a monk—were the words "Swear Jar", and underneath the aforementioned title were listened numerous curses and four-letter words, each with a set price ascribed to it. Sure enough, 'gods-damn it' was worth three _fen_. A postscript beneath the list stated "all proceeds go towards a positive rebirth". He groaned, "A swear jar? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"That will be three _jiao_," the monk curtly replied.

Po tugged on the snow leopard's sleeve and whispered, "Its only three _jiao_, and three _fen_. Just pay it and we can get in."

"I'm not paying for every swear word that comes from my mouth!" he hissed, stubbornly crossing his arms. "It's the principle of the thing!"

"This is a monastery; you can't expect these guys to swear as much as you do."

"So what, you expect me to give that up completely? Bullocks, that's not happening."

"If I were him," the monk said. "I'd provide a down payment if he wanted to come in here."

"Screw you," the snow leopard muttered, feeling slightly guilty that he was saying this to a monk—a very irritating monk, but a monk nonetheless. He had morals, but they simply were not always at the forefront of his priorities.

Po had had enough. They had not come so far just to be turned away, and he made sure to tell off this monk who was barring their path.

"Look, we came a long way to see Master Sun Bear…"

"Don't care. Go away."

Now incredibly irritated, the panda drew himself up to his full height (and considering he stood about as tall as his feline companion, that was saying something). "We came all the way from the Jade Palace to see him, under orders from Grand Master Shifu—"

"Good for you, now go away!"

"Oi," Tai Lung snapped. "You can't talk to him that way!"

"All visitors must be treated as any other pilgrim," the monk sniffed. "Here, all are equal before the eyes of the Enlightened One."

"What about the emperor? Do you force him to pay three _jiao_—"

"And three _fen_," Po reminded him.

"—_Shut up_—for every curse word? Would you bar _him_ too?"

The mutt monk nodded, "Of course; this is to weed out the insincere. Besides, he's not _my_ emperor."

Tai Lung groaned and slapped his hand to his forehead. He muttered to Po, "Buddhists…"

"What?"

"Buddhist monasteries do this all over the place. I visited one once when I was younger, with Shifu and Oogway. We ended up waiting outside the gate for three days until they let us in."

"Three _days_? We barely have enough food left for one day!"

"Your fault, not mine!" the monk interjected.

"Bugger off!" Tai Lung snapped. "Look, I've got very little patience…"

"No kidding," said the monk.

"Sod off. Now if you don't open this gate," Tai Lung said, dropping into a low battle stance, "I'll open it for you."

"You're going to regret that."

"The hell I will!"

"Five _jiao_."

"For what? For saying 'hell'?"

"Ten _jiao_."

"Wait," Po asked. "What if he's saying it in reference to the place? Y'know, as a proper noun?"

"He didn't mean it as a proper noun."

"How do you know?"

The monk promptly fell into a lecture: "Take the placement of the offending word within the sentence. He has placed the H-word in a position prior to the subject, being 'I'. The verb 'will' comes at the end of the sentence in this particular predicate-subject-verb structure. Therefore, one can only assume that the H-word was used as a…"

"Are you _quite_ finished?!" Tai Lung cut off the grammar lesson, his tail frizzing up from stress. "This damn door—"

"Three _fen_," the monk tallied.

"—is coming down, even if it kills me!" Tai Lung's patience, naturally short in supply, had been quickly depleted, and so help him, he would give that monk that three _fen_, and it wouldn't go to a very happy place… He should have been bothered by the intense levels of violence he felt at this particular holy man, but he was behaving in a distinctly unholy manner…at least _he_ thought so.

But as soon as Tai Lung launched for the door, the massive ancient structures gave way, revealing a short, stringy figure garbed in golden yellow robes. His grey fur hung from his thin frame, like moss upon an ancient tree, the pelt hinting that once, long ago, this animal had significantly darker fur. The weather-beaten look on the abbot's face—for he was most certainly the Master of this mountaintop domain—portrayed him as a man used to braving the elements and working outside. In fact, the ancient master's eyes were squinted so closely into a permanent glare they appeared to be shut, but in fact, was the result of one who had spent the better part of his life in the bright sun. Unlike Shifu, who appeared weighed down by all his troubles past and present, this master stood tall and firm like an impenetrable mountain.

But more to Tai Lung's shock was that, as he expected to run right into the old bear, the grey bear quickly sidestepped and grabbed the snow leopard by the back of his collar, yanking him back. Tai Lung reacted in kind, grabbing the loose sleeve of the saffron-yellow robe. Before the astonished eyes of the monks and the Dragon Warrior, the old master and the snow leopard launched into an impressive display of close-quarters fighting, the bear's wrinkled fist full of Tai Lung's collar, and Tai Lung's claws firmly gripping his opponent's sleeve.

The old master successfully deflected a punch, and just as abruptly, the pair stopped, staring at each other, studying. The bear's squinted eyes narrowed further as he scrutinized his opponent, then they widened in surprise.

"You didn't intend to hit me," he said, his voice surprisingly low and strong. "You were going to intentionally miss me, weren't you?"

Tai Lung's eyes flicked to the side, catching on that they had an audience in the other curious monks. "Er…well, I can't exactly hit an old man, can I? Even I know that's low."

"And you are?"

He thought about how to answer that. As he had told Po, though he had been cleared in the Valley of Peace, Tai Lung was still considered Public Enemy Number One throughout the rest of the empire, as far as the Imperial Guards were concerned. Adding to that, he would be traveling with the Dragon Warrior. Any one who believed this was an advantage was either naïve or dim-witted. Po had been forewarned of the possibility of assassins being after him, or other warriors willing to do as Jiao Shen had: killing him, and thus assuming the title by default. Therefore, it served both their best interests to travel under numerous pseudonyms, and Tai Lung knew which one he should use here.

"Tenzin," he answered.

The grey bear stared at him a moment longer, then offered a slow, yet strained, smile. "Tenzin, eh? 'Protector of the Sacred Path'…is that what you are?"

"I don't know what I am; that's why I'm here."

"Good answer." The bear turned to look at Po. "And you are?"

Po didn't hesitate. "Shang."

Tai Lung blinked, then stared at Po in surprise. It took him a moment to process the bear's homage, and when he did, he smiled; he had adopted the name of Dalang's slain brother as his alias. Tai Lung was certain that if Dalang were to know of this, he'd likely be both touched and honored.

The yellow-robed bear stared at the panda a moment longer before letting go of Tai Lung's collar. "Very well, Shang and Tenzin, welcome to the Temple of the Phoenix." He then turned and called off the other monks. "They're guests of mine, brothers. Let them pass in peace. So, Tenzin, was it?"

The snow leopard loosened his grip on the bear's sleeve. "Yes…erm, were you somehow expecting us?"

"In a way," the bear said, burrowing his hands inside his wide sleeves. He glanced at Po as the panda stepped across the threshold. "My visions told me to expect two strangers today, and I can only assume by your…" he arched a bushy grey brow, "…_fascinating_ manners that you are the ones I am expecting. Not very surprising—if the both of you are who I think you are, then I have been waiting for you two for a long time. Fifteenth Brother," he growled at the gatekeeper monk, low and slow, enunciating each word. "Don't let there be a _next_ time, are we understood?"

The monk bowed low, apologizing profusely. The old master waved him off, then beckoned the two travelers. "Follow me. There is much to discuss, much to learn, much to teach. But first, food and rest. It is a long trek from the Valley of Peace."

Po balked. "How did you know…?"

"Simple. People from the Valley of Peace tend to be far more idealistic and _individualistic_ than other areas of China…quite a bit more rebellious too," he eyed the snow leopard. "But the most elementary reason…the robes you're wearing say 'Made in the Valley of Peace' on the tag."

Po and Tai Lung stared at each other before Tai Lung tugged on the back of Po's collar to check. Sure enough, there was a tag on the back of the collar with the characters for "Made in Valley of Peace, Hunan".

"Well I'll be damned," he swore.

The yellow-robed master cleared his throat and pointed at a conveniently placed Swear Jar. Tai Lung sent him an incredulous look, then after a long staring contest, the snow leopard sighed and opened up his money bag. "Fine…" he grumbled.

Po cleared his throat and asked the bear, "So, does that mean you're…"

The old bear turned back to smirk in a most un-monk-like way. "That's right. I am Master Sun Bear."

* * *

He officially welcomed them in the monastery's library, where two monks were inscribing scrolls from older texts, hunched over their desks, eyes squinted as they nearly pressed their noses to the parchment. Master Sun Bear led the two warriors over to a room in the back, so they would not disturb the scribes. They sat on cushions on the floor, Po and Tai Lung trying their best not to look too uncomfortable. Used to the general splendor of the Jade Palace, this monastery looked dank, dark, and so dreary that Tai Lung would later remark that "a graveyard has more cheer".

"I'd offer you something to eat," Master Sun Bear began, "but as monks, there is very little we can offer by way of comfort. We will feed you, of course; we have never turned anyone away, if they needed it. But first, you must tell me why you're here."

Po and Tai Lung shared a look, each daring the other to start first. When Po gave him the most significant look, Tai Lung sighed raggedly and began. "I…I guess I'm a fallen warrior."

"You _guess_?" Sun Bear asked with a straight face. "Meaning you don't know?"

"That's the point, isn't it?" the snow leopard argued. "I had the chance for honor and glory, and I blew it, and it cost me dearly. The people I hurt directly have since forgiven me, and I've moved on, tried to make a better life for myself, a peaceful life…but I still feel like something's missing."

"Ah, a mid-life crisis; got it." Sun Bear's clipped answer was surprising, but more so when he suddenly turned his attention to Po, giving Tai Lung no room to object. "And you?"

Po swallowed hard and replied. "I haven't always been a warrior like my friend here, but…we recently found out that someone is plotting to hurt our families, and I want to know how to protect the ones I love. I already know _some_ kung fu, but I don't think its enough."

"A noble endeavor, to be sure," Sun Bear nodded. "You are not the first panda warrior, to be frank. Perhaps it is your upbringing in the Valley of Peace—for that is indeed a Valley accent you speak with—that has made you so…soft, shall we say?" He cleared his throat and continued, "But most giant pandas are fierce creatures and even fiercer warriors, despite their fluffy and cuddly appearance."

"Me? _Fierce_?" Po asked with genuine confusion.

Sun Bear smiled so thinly it looked to be forced. "That is the appeal of being an ursine warrior."

Tai Lung interjected, "Other warriors will underestimate them." And he had; oh, had he ever. The words still rang in his ears: _'You? __**Him**__? He's a panda, you're a panda! What're you going to do, big guy, sit on me?'_ Tai Lung had misjudged Po, and while he'd been completely humiliated by his defeat, the more he thought about it, the more he realized he shouldn't have been. Being defeated by a panda—or any bear—wasn't such a bad thing, if you survived. In his years as a warrior, the snow leopard was lucky to have only fought _one_ bear…and that monochromatic ursine was sitting right next to him.

Sun Bear smirked knowingly at him. "Exactly. I'm guessing you have experience in this field?"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"Fair enough. Well, it seems your fears and desires are legitimate, and all good reasons to seek us out. The question of why you chose this place above others is a mystery, though I'll assume the Late Master Oogway mentioned me once; it will not be the first time, nor will it be the last, if I live much longer. If you do intend to stay to seek what you are seeking, there will need to be ground rules."

"Okay," Po nodded.

"First, you must accept all the rules and regulations of the monastery. That includes discarding all earthly possessions excepting the clothes on your back, a blanket, and a bowl for food.

"Secondly, you must accept our standard of living. No one shall receive special treatment. You are on a spiritual journey, and pride will only distract you from the course you seek. Considering your circumstances," he nodded at Po, "We will try to find these answers as soon as possible. Though I warn you, it could take years—"

"YEARS?!" Tai Lung gaped. "We don't _have_ years!"

"One can not expect to find enlightenment on a strict timeline, warrior," Sun Bear tersely advised.

"I'm not looking for enlightenment!" the snow leopard growled and abruptly stood. "I'm looking for purpose! And right now, I'm thinking my purpose is to be back at home with my wife. She needs me a hell of a lot more than I need you!"

Sun Bear simply stared at him, then silently bid him to sit. "Married, are you? And a father-to-be…your first child, I'm guessing?"

The snow leopard nodded, mystified that he'd been found out. Was he really so transparent?

Sun Bear closed his eyes and let out a long breath. "No wonder you are so anxious. Well, I can't guarantee anything, but if I know more about you, Master Tenzin, perhaps we can help you find your purpose sooner rather than later."

Tai Lung fell silent, sitting down again and resting his palms on his knees. "I'm not sure how much I'm comfortable revealing…"

"The source of that discomfort comes from pride, which you have a lot of, it seems."

Tai Lung drew back when Sun Bear leaned forward, peering into the snow leopard's face. For the first time, the snow leopard felt as if this other male could and most certainly would look into his soul to see what lay beneath…and that thought terrified him. This fear did not escape the old master's notice.

"Yes, a lot of pride…but I also see a lot of fear, and a lot of pain." He paused, and then sat back, burrowing his hands in his wide sleeves. "You have been done a grave injustice, many injustices…but have committed many yourself. And if I am not mistaken, you look at your sins and see your punishment as justified, don't you?"

"_Nothing_ could justify the punishment I received!" he snarled.

"I agree. The problem with an eye for an eye is that both eyes end up blind, and both hearts are hardened to stone," Sun Bear replied. "Justice is only thinly veiled revenge, and revenge is a far greater evil than most men realize."

"So we just let people walk all over us, do we?" Tai Lung asked.

"Absolutely not," Sun Bear said. "No one can make you feel inadequate unless you _let_ them. And you—both of you—appear to have let the slings and arrows of others affect how you behave. This must not do. Now, is there anything else you want to say before we continue?"

Panda and snow leopard shared a look. Tai Lung wanted to ask about the Phoenix Scroll, and Po wished to inquire about the legends of the Dragon and Phoenix Warriors. It was Po who spoke first.

"Why is this place called the _Phoenix_ Temple?"

Sun Bear thinly smiled again. "A most common query; and I have no misgivings indulging your curiosity.

"It is said that long ago, back before China was ever an empire unified under a single banner, there was a mythical bird that lived at the top of this very mountain. The people worshipped the bird as a Triple God—of life, death, and rebirth—the one that ensured that the karmic cycle continued to turn. In that time, the land that was to become China was embroiled in bitter civil wars between the provinces, generals and warlords doing battle against each other daily. Families were torn apart, lives ruined…and it was in this time that the people prayed more fervently for deliverance from the violence and death that had thrown the karmic cycle out of balance. The heavenly bird—the Phoenix—answered their prayers by bestowing a warrior that would protect them from the evils that plagued the land.

"This warrior was said to have been one who had lived, died, and been reborn to far greater power than mere mortals are thought to possess. That he was a gift from the gods in a time of crisis. Whatever the truth may be, this warrior fought back the armies single-handedly, laid warlords low, defeated and completely destroyed all who opposed him; but he was by far not the greatest ever to live. Tell me, as you are both from the Valley of Peace; are either of you familiar with the legend of the Dragon Warrior?"

Both warriors perked up, struggling to fight back their astonishment. If Sun Bear noticed, he did not let on, though Po had the feeling that this old master knew they were not who they said they were. "Erm," Tai Lung began, "We're vaguely familiar with it…I've heard things."

"Ditto," Po nodded.

Oh, Sun Bear definitely knew they were lying, that much was obvious, given the sharp stare he sent both of them. But he didn't pursue it. "I see. Well, you are familiar with the legends, that the Dragon Warrior was the greatest ever to live, and that the very first—for there _was_ a first, many centuries ago—who unraveled the secrets to limitless power, and decided to share these secrets with those who needed it most.

"However, not all people have the purest intentions for learning these secrets. He discovered this the hard way. He taught the wrong person the secret to ultimate power, and that person betrayed him, and nearly killed him. The Dragon Warrior took the secret with him to a high-security location: the Jade Palace.

"Its location was vital, and rather circumspect. The great sage, Grand Master Oogway, the Author of Kung Fu, saw the Valley of Peace as the perfect place to conceal the secret, but rumors have a way of leaking out…fortunately, the Dragon Scroll was well-protected by the Devil's Mouth, which as you well know, is the deep gorge that separates the Valley from the mainland, accessible only by a thin, rickety old rope bridge—aptly named the Thread of Hope—that can be cut at a moment's notice. It is too fragile for an army to cross, and very few souls are brave or stupid enough to cross it in search of treasure. This was why the Jade Palace was chosen."

"But wait, I heard there was an average of two Dragon Warriors every couple hundred years…" Po said.

"Lies and nonsense," the Master snapped. "There was only _one_ true Dragon Warrior—the others were imposters, trying to cash in on whatever fortune they thought the scroll led to. And every single one of them suffered for their greed."

Po promptly shut his mouth, allowing the old master to continue.

"By the time the Dragon Scroll was safe in the Jade Palace, rumors began to circulate about it—that the scroll itself had magical abilities, that whosoever possessed it was granted ultimate power over time and space, and was granted immortality. The friend who had betrayed the Dragon Warrior sought the scroll, and sought to kill him…but the Phoenix Warrior learned of the plot, and journeyed to the Jade Palace to save the Dragon Warrior's life. The Dragon Warrior was forever grateful, and in thanks to the Phoenix Warrior's selfless act, commissioned a monastery—_this_ monastery—to be built on this very mountain.

"Now, I am aware of the rumors surrounding _this_ place as well. Such as the rumor that there is a 'Phoenix Scroll' like there is a Dragon Scroll; that the very first Phoenix Warrior is entombed here in this mountain; that there is magic and curses, and the gift of immortality in the water…" he chuckled lowly. "Well, I may look good for my age, but mere water granting immortality?"

"Is any of that true?" Tai Lung asked. "The Phoenix Warrior being buried here, I mean…and the scroll."

"That's the thing: no one knows," he said, and he sounded sincere. "I have been here since my youth, and though I have looked, I have found no evidence to support the rumors. The legends never say what happened to the two warriors after…" he trailed off suddenly, a look in his eye telling the pair that perhaps he had said more than was wise.

"After what?" Po gently asked, not wanting to pressure the old master. Master Sun Bear sighed through his nose and lowered his voice,

"I might as well tell you. We do not speak of that battle—here, it is simply known as The Great Fight—and everyone knows what it is. The things that happened there…" he shook his head, "The things that our fellow creatures will do to us when angry enough or desperate enough…those things are the reason I don't believe Hell exists in the afterlife. Hell is here on earth, in the darkest corners of men's hearts. All the legends say is that the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior left to fight in the Great Fight…and were never heard from again."

"Did they die?" Tai Lung asked.

Sun Bear surprised him by whipping out a bamboo staff and knocking him on the head with it. "Didn't you hear me, you fool?!" the bear growled. "I said _no one knows what happened_ _to them_. I think that's pretty clear!"

"You didn't have to hit me," the snow leopard grumbled, rubbing the growing lump on his crown.

"But is that all?" Po asked. "I mean, yeah, I—we've heard of the Dragon Warrior…but we didn't know there was a Phoenix Warrior too."

"But of course there was," Sun Bear said, laying the bamboo staff across his crossed knees. "The Dragon and the Phoenix make each other whole, they bring balance and prosperity. Just as with yin and yang, good and evil, so too are the Dragon and Phoenix compliments of each other. One cannot exist without the other. The Emperor and Empress of China are often referred to as the dragon and phoenix, respectively."

Tai Lung inwardly scowled. Naturally, he did not like the idea of being in a submissive, traditionally feminine role; his masculine arrogance made that very hard to swallow. But, he kept listening.

"I suggest you not bother to seek out those legends—that is not the point of your being here in the first place," Sun Bear concluded, then stood in one fluid motion. "Now, if I have indulged your curiosity enough, I think its time to acclimate you to the life of a monk. Come, there is much to be done…"

* * *

Po found very quickly that life here at this particular monastery was tough. Granted, that diet he was planning would be no issue: all the monks were allowed to eat was rice and weak tea, and of course whatever edible donations were given to them by the villagers below. He and Tai Lung had been brought to the gatehouse where there was a fair supply of robes for the monks' use. As "novices", they were given deep red robes much like the young boys in the compound. The boys followed them around, peeking curiously at the strange pair. Though they were not so exotic—Po saw a couple bear cubs and other Tibetan and Chinese nationals among the monks—the fact that both he and Tai Lung were complete strangers was enough to cause a fuss. One young red panda seemed to have become Tai Lung's shadow immediately, an irony the snow leopard took little time in pointing out.

Freshly garbed in the red woolen robes, they walked the grounds behind Sun Bear, who went over the rules.

"You are never to take anything that is not given to you. You are to follow the schedule that is given to you, and to obey all your superiors…which means, of course, you obey everyone in this monastery who has been here longer than you, even the youngest child."

_Not that that's demeaning in any way, _Po thought, knowing that Tai Lung was thinking the same thing.

"You shall not partake in sins of the flesh…" Sun Bear turned to look at them, and studied them carefully before retracting his comment. "Actually, scratch that—you probably wouldn't, even if given the opportunity. As for your training—which you shall certainly need in your quest—we will begin in the morning. You are very tired from your journey, so I will allow you to go to your cells early."

"Cells?" Tai Lung choked. Po winced; of course, anything that reminded his friend of prison wouldn't go over so well.

"There are no bars in there, Master Tenzin," Sun Bear said mockingly. "It is an open door and a small room. In the days to come, perhaps you _may_ think this a prison, but believe me, it is not. I can make it much worse for you if you give me the chance."

They both felt a chill at the open threat.

* * *

The small red panda escorted them to the dormitory, the little novice obviously enamored with the two strangers. However, the cub was strangely silent the whole time he led them through the labyrinth of corridors and courtyards towards their lodgings. When Po asked him his name, the cub just shook his head and said nothing. The little monk showed them two empty rooms, and pantomimed taking their things; he showed them the storeroom of personal effects, which was locked at all times. Master Sun Bear possessed the only key to that warehouse, and had obviously unlocked it just for the purpose of these visitors leaving their personal items.

The red panda then gave them the basic necessities: a bowl for their meals, a cup for their tea, a pair of sandals each, and a blanket for their cells. Once the pair of warriors had been escorted back to their bunks, the little red panda cub bowed to them, pressing his palms together and bending at the waist before scurrying off to perform his other duties.

"Cute kid," Po said. "Kinda quiet, though."

"Panda," Tai Lung said, rolling his eyes. "He's taken a vow of silence."

"Isn't he a little young for that?"

"Any monk who's serious about the monastic life can take it at any time they want."

"So you're obviously not taking on the monastic life anytime soon."

"Shut up."

Po sighed and bent down to look through the short doorway into his sleeping quarters. There was barely enough room for a man to lie on his back and stick his legs straight out. The cells had to measure four feet by six feet, and even this was a generous measurement. There was one small square window high above, and absolutely no furniture, save for a thin straw-filled quilt that served as a mattress. The more Po thought about, the more it seemed that it would be more comfortable sleeping on the bare floor.

Tai Lung, however, looked at his new sleeping quarters with apprehension. Po put his hand on his shoulder. "It's not that bad," he said. "There aren't even any bars or chains."

"_Shut up_," he hissed.

"Aw c'mon, Ta—Tenzin," he quickly corrected himself, and laughed. "I mean, it's not like you're claustrophobic, or anything…"

When he didn't answer right away, Po looked at him, shocked. "…You are? Why didn't you say something?"

"It never came up." He shrugged and got on hands and knees to crawl through the open doorway. "I'm exhausted; you should get some sleep too."

"You gonna be okay?"

"Trust me, _Shang_, I'll live," he irritably replied.

Po squeezed his way through the door to his own cell and lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. It was a tight fit, he admitted, feeling once again that he really needed to lose weight. Whatever Sun Bear had in store for them, hopefully it would help. As he drifted off to sleep, finally giving in to the exhaustion from the past week and a half, Po's thoughts traveled back to the Valley of Peace. He wondered how his dad was doing, how Moon festival had been, whether or not Tigress was still obsessively training (and more significantly, if she and Dalang had made up), and by far most important how Su Lin was doing. When he left, she had seemed so sad to see him go, so that meant she wasn't completely mad at him, and that goodbye kiss left him feeling she cared, but raised more questions than answers. Such as whether or not she was physically attracted to him, or just putting up a façade.

Po sighed and rolled onto his side, drawing his fingers along the cold stone floor as he pictured her in his mind. She was so wonderful, she really did deserve better than him. Po closed his eyes and prayed that whatever lessons Master Sun Bear had to teach, that they would be able to turn Po into the kind of man Su Lin deserved.

* * *

"Tai Lung…"

"Five more minutes."

"Get up. We need to talk."

"Not now, Mei; five more minutes, love, _please_…" Tai Lung yowled as the shock surged through his body, sitting straight up to face—

"I'm just going to call you Mrs. Jiao from now on, just to piss you off," he grumbled.

Ming Hua sighed and crossed her arms. "Fine, and don't bother to say 'Well hello, Ming Hua, how lovely to see you again!'"

"I would, if I weren't so damn exhausted."

"Oh, quit complaining, you're still asleep." She pointed at the floor and Tai Lung saw himself—or rather, his body—lying in a complete unconscious state of slumber.

"Not that that's unnerving in any way," he muttered.

"Tai Lung, sweetie, focus," the spectral tigress said whilst snapping her fingers to bring his attention back to her. "First things first, I need to tell you that my visitations are going to get more and more frequent, as Oogway's visitations to Po will multiply."

"Again, I don't see why you need to go through all the trouble of us having two different—"

"Because if we were assigned to the both of you, you would learn things about Po he wouldn't want you to know, and there are plenty of things I'm _sure_ you don't want him knowing." She let this sink in, watching with a mother's careful eye how swiftly the snow leopard's demeanor changed.

"You…you know about…?"

"About what happened to you in Chorh-Gom?" she finished. "Yes; I was there with your mother." Her expression softened. "Believe me, if she had been alive, there wouldn't have been a single guard left for you to kill during your escape. I'm sure had she a demon's power, every one responsible would be drowning in the Lake of Blood long before your escape."

"She saw it? All of it?"

"She saw as much as she needed to see." Ming Hua hesitated, then said, "There is no shame in that. You are not the one who should be ashamed."

"But it happened to me, didn't it?" he asked, feeling equally weak, nauseous, and bitter.

"Despite what you might think, you are not less of a man for what happened to you."

"I should have been able to fight them," he said, extracting his claws. "I may have been immobilized, but damn it, I should have been able to kill them all!"

"And what good would that have done?" she asked as she moved about the room. The hem of her dress disappeared into the floor as she glided along the walls, and she stopped to look down at Tai Lung's sleeping form. "Had you killed them, you would have been executed before you could say 'off with his head'. No…believe it or not, there was a very good reason for you to stay there for twenty years."

"Gods, here we go…" he groaned as he rolled his eyes. "You expect me to believe that all things really do happen for a reason?"

"Actually, I do. I know from experience."

Tai Lung thought about her words, then swiftly changed the subject when he caught her meaning…or thought he did. "Did you love him?"

Ming Hua froze, turning her head slightly to look at him. "Excuse me?"

"Did you love him, your husband?"

"I'm not here to talk about me; I'm here to talk about you."

"Humor me."

When she didn't answer right away, Tai Lung decided to guess…and he was surprised to find he was right. "You _did_ love him, didn't you?"

She hugged herself, hanging her head and looking defeated. "You must think I am weak."

"Madam, I had the misfortune of fighting _three_ of your sons, and the honor of fighting beside two more of them. Believe me when I say that if your children are any indication, you are most certainly _not_ weak."

"Weak of spirit, perhaps," she woefully said. "I hated him when I married him, to a point, I still hate him. I hate what he did to my friends, to my family, to the Lotus School and the surrounding village, and he did it all for his own selfish reasons. He ruined my life, and ruined _me_. I never went into that marriage willingly, and don't you dare suggest I did."

"I would never do such a thing," he said. "I know from Dalang, and what little I spoke of with Shang, that you despised your husband, or at least never showed any outward affection."

"Its true, I didn't." The ghostly tigress hesitated again, then confessed, "But I did begin to care, at least a little. Despite being the monster he was, he still gave me seven beautiful children, the most priceless treasures a woman could ask for. Despite the way he destroyed my past, he at least prepared for my future, plundering enough that I should be well cared-for if he died before me. After Shang was born—not long after you were born, as I understand—I noticed Shen would hang around me more, bring me gifts, special foods, and dote on me more than he doted on his own son. It wasn't until after Dalang was born that I realized Shen truly did love me. He had odd, sometimes awful ways of showing it, but he did care…"

"But he treated his sons like dirt."

She shook her head. "Not when I was alive, he didn't. I wouldn't allow it. He struck Xiang _once_ and I nearly took his hand off. After that, he only yelled at them…though very rarely, and never when I was around. And if he ever did…"

"I'm beginning to see why Dalang likes strong women. And why he's so afraid of his own wife." He paused, then asked, "I need to know…How is she? Mei Xing, I mean. Does Mum tell you anything?"

Ming Hua hesitated, then smiled benignly. "Don't worry, your wife is fine. Believe me, as long as Nima is with her, nothing bad will happen to her. For now, you should worry about _you,_ Tai Lung. And heed these words very carefully…"

He sat up straighter, listening closely.

"Sun Bear is very old," Ming Hua said, "but do not mistake him for being weak. Weak people do not survive long in this environment, which means he is a lot stronger than he looks. I know that in the coming days and weeks, he will tell you to do things that may contradict each other, and he will say things that don't make sense. He is being deceptive, and for good reason."

"I can't trust him," Tai Lung growled.

"I didn't say that," she said, pursing her lips. "He will try to keep you from discovering the Phoenix Scroll—"

"But he said it doesn't exist!"

"—who are you going to believe, a mortal deceiver, or someone who can walk through walls?" she imparted with a flat look.

"So the scroll _does_ exist, and I just need to find it?" he asked her.

"I can only give you so much guidance…" she said as her image became blurry and grew fainter by the second. Her voice sounded as an echoing whisper, leading him to know that his vision was quickly ending. "But just remember," she whispered, "that the best hiding place is often in plain sight."

When Tai Lung opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the flat, chiseled wall across from him. He knew having any vision was remarkable, and most were lucky to have one in their lifetimes. But if he and Po were going to have many more…did that have anything to do with their perceived mystical abilities? And more importantly, just as with the snow leopard's strength—and temper—however these abilities manifested, would they be able to control them?

* * *

Lang knew better than anyone how it felt to be completely and utterly terrified of a superior. His father, though a fair man, could incite the fear of the gods into any one of his children with the mere mention of cutting a switch for a naughty child. Lang's mother, while not as forthright about it, was still a force to be reckoned with if her temper was ever stoked; the only time he had ever seen her truly angry was the _one_ occasion an army recruiter tried to take him and his brothers away to serve the Emperor. The recruiter eventually told his comrades and commanding officers to steer clear of that family's farm…after he had recovered from his injuries, of course.

Given these two examples from his immediate family, one would assume biology would be on the young wolf's side. That could not have been further from the truth. His family had a long tradition of showing their love through teasing and ridicule, ultimately turning their second-born son into an overly sensitive coward.

That was how he'd gotten into trouble with White Wolf. At the time he thought he was brave just to steal money so he could run away from that emotional hell, and instead found himself indebted and enslaved by the very man he tried to slight. Still, a one thousand _yuan_ debt for only stealing twenty _yuan_ seemed a bit excessive. But because he was a coward with low self-esteem, Lang accepted it, knowing that fighting his position would get him killed.

While not well-educated (he _could_ read, and write, but only a little, only enough characters and math to know how to run a farm), Lang was smart enough to know he was in trouble. Asmodei Koshchei wasn't called the Demon of the North for nothing. He was a worse boogey man than Tai Lung was—Lang had grown up with those stories of the dangerous, homicidal animal Tai Lung was supposed to be, so naturally, being told he had to assassinate him was enough cause for alarm.

But everything he knew about Tai Lung was fact; Tai Lung had laid waste to the Valley of Peace, inadvertently killing numerous people (though never directly, apparently), and he had broken out of an inescapable prison, killing one thousand well-trained guards in the process.

Everything he knew about Koshchei was myth and rumor. Most assassins wouldn't dare speak his name, and few of them actually knew it. The "Siberian Demon" was the most-used moniker he'd heard, along with the reputation that frightened even the Mongols. Given all the stories, the myths, and likely fabrications, Lang was most surprised not by the creature's species…but by his age.

Asmodei Koshchei was old enough to have been eighty—at least—ancient by normal Chinese standards; most peasants were lucky to live to see forty years of age. Short and stocky, and wearing long-sleeved tunics and woolen trousers in fashions so very foreign to the Chinese wolves who currently followed him, he walked with an ease that defied the stereotypes of his age. As they walked southward along that forest path, Lang kept studying their leader. He _had_ to be pushing eighty, _at least_, and instead of being skeletal like most old people, Koshchei took remarkable care of himself. He was burly and far stronger than any eighty-year-old man had reason to be, with a quick mind and even quicker claws. And those eyes, those shining blue eyes, sparkling with mirth like a jolly elder, crinkling at the corners with laugh lines deep as the seas. Instead of looking monstrous, Koshchei looked…nice. Was there any other word for it? He had saved Lang from a life of slavery, and was the first person in his life to respect him, to care about his well-being. He even _complimented_ him.

"Smallish-type!" Koshchei called. "Up front, vit me. You much slow; you are tired?"

"Uh, a little," Lang said, jogging up to the front of the line. He ignored the glares at his back, knowing Zi Hao, at least, was not happy with the leopard's favoritism.

"Ach, is no vonder—look how skinny!" the leopard said, tugging on the wolf's scrawny arm. "Vhen ve get further south, let old Koshchei find food to stuff vit, yes? Fatten this one up, grow much strong, like bear!"

Lang flushed red from the attention, and smiled. "I don't think I could get big as a bear—I was the runt of the litter."

"I vas runt, too," Koshchei smirked. "Vhen I grown, I…vhat is term? 'Kick donkey of brothers'?"

"Kicked their asses?" Lang offered a correction.

The leopard grinned and laughed, "_Da_, that! Ahh, I feel is beginning of good friendship, yes?"

"Uh, yeah, whatever you say."

"So, Smallish-type, vhat is name?"

"Uh, Lang, sir."

"Is strange name for Han, Mr. Ah-lang-sir—"

"Lang. Just Lang. It means 'wolf'."

Koshchei raised a brow. "Family not…vhat is vord…creative?"

Lang stared at the ground in front of him. "I was the runt, what did they care? I think they're surprised I actually lived to adulthood."

"You Han much like sons, yes? And they not treat you well? Most confusing…"

"No, we Chinese value sons over daughters, but I was weaker than even my sisters…they told me a lot that I was such a sickly baby they should've drowned me in the stream when I was born, but that I ate so little that it didn't matter anyway."

Koshchei looked at the wolf with concern. "Is how family talk?"

Lang's ears flattened against his head, and he muttered a quick reply. "How mine does, anyway."

"Is clear they not love you." Koshchei reached into his tunic for his pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco. "Vhy else they treat treasure like trash? Have I ever a son, I vould treat him like chest of gold; a daughter, treat like jewels. Children is precious, yes?"

"Why didn't you have kids?" Lang asked. Behind him, he heard one of the Half Dozen scoff and snicker. Koshchei ignored them.

"Vas much young…about your age…very pretty girl—Sonya vas name. Very pretty; not vork out."

"Why not?"

"She die."

Lang lowered his ears again. "I'm sorry."

Koshchei waved it off. "Bah, is long time. Besides, am much old—see Sonya again much soon, eh?" he chuckled at his own joke. Lang smiled half-heartedly, unsure if he should cut in and say "no, of course not, you will have many more years!" or something to that effect, or if he should laugh and join in the joke. Koshchei surprised him by throwing an arm around his shoulders; Lang's mind was thrown into a whirlwind as all sorts of scenarios flashed across his imagination, most of them ending with him meeting a very painful and very violent demise.

"Tell you vhat," Koshchei started. "Is, eh...proposition, is vord? I never haff son, and you haff bad time vit own Papa...vhat you say you be like son to me, yes?"

Lang swallowed hard, both from the fear that had dried out his mouth, and from the sudden rise in emotion at the leopard's offer. "That's a bad idea," the wolf said, but quickly covered; if was not _the_ reason, but it was one that would cover his tail. "You don't want me. Not even my own parents wanted me. White Wolf didn't--"

"Vhite Volf is dead," Koshchei reminded. "Who care vhat dead man think? Only matter vhat living man think. And _I_ think you vould make good apprentice."

"Then you're making a mistake. Why me? Why not one of them?" he asked, pointing back at the Half Dozen. "They're stronger, smarter, and just…better. I'm just _me_."

Koshchei looked down at him, blowing smoke through his sharp teeth as he thought. "Sound like young man I know once. I am thinking I can help. All you need is co-dependence."

"I think you mean 'confidence'."

"Is vhat I say," Koshchei shrugged. He took his pipe away from his mouth, exhaled some smoke and draped a heavy arm around the scrawny omega's shoulders. "Leesten, leesten..." he said, lowering his tone so that only Lang could hear him. "You and those volfs...not so much different. Is only they much bigger, yes? I am runt of litter, smallish-type of species, but I am feared, yes? You can be feared too. Stick vit old Koshchei, and people vill fear _you_ too."

Lang thought for a moment. "So...that means no one would push me around anymore?"

"Eggs-actly!"

Well...that was actually quite an attractive proposal. At this point, Lang was tired of being pushed around, tired of being kicked and spit upon, tired of always being at the bottom of the pecking order. "It's a long way to the top," Lang said. "I don't think I could ever be like you."

A smile slowly grew across Koshchei's black lips as he bit down on his pipe. "Doan't vorry so much; I am thinking ve are more alike than you think. I am thinking you much smarter than _blyadskii mudak_ back there," he said, thumbing over his shoulder at Zi Hao.

"_Blyadskii mudak_? What's that mean?" Lang asked.

Koshchei wavered. "Ehh...is saying to someone you do not like. Do not recommend using it in my homeland—natives not like so much."

"So it's an insult."

"Is _much_ insult; I can teach more, you say things in nice vay to black volf, he think it good thing."

"So…in theory," Lang said, a delighted smile slowly growing across his maw, "I could say those things, and he'd never know what they really were?"

"Of course!" Koshchei grinned wickedly. "Use much Han svears vhen in my homeland—no one know difference! Think is compliment." He let out a harsh laugh that sounded almost like a naughty little boy playing a trick. He paused, regarding the young wolf a moment, then asked, "I teach you Russian?"

Lang lowered his ears—it was a habit as ingrained as howling. "If I'm any good at it. I wasn't good in school, either; I'd be a bad student."

"Not true, you are much good," Koshchei nodded, blowing smoke out of his nostrils. "Learn pronounce vords good—pronounce good naow; say '_blyadskii mudak_' much good naow. You can learn language—much easy, compare to Han-speak."

"Chinese," Lang corrected.

"_Chinese_," Koshchei repeated with a nod, rolling the word off his teeth and lips. Then he smiled. "See? I am old man, and still learn new thing each day. If old man can learn, young smallish-type volf learn much quicker."

Lang thought about it, then internally shrugged. What did he have to lose? "So…aside from _blyadskii mudak_…what other insults are there?"

* * *

"Admit it."

"Admit what?"

"Admit that he actually did something right."

"No way in hell."

"_Hao_…" Lan Duo said warningly.

Zi Hao snarled at the light grey wolf, "Don't take that tone with me!"

"What other tone do you expect?" the lackadaisical wolf asked his dark comrade. "Admit it—the kid found the best assassin there is. Anyone who would try to assassinate the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung would have to be crazy, and let's face it, Asmodei Koshchei is the right kind of crazy."

"I agree," Xu Jiu said, munching on an apple he'd filched from a farmer's tree. Bits of food fell from his full cheeks as he spoke with a mouthful of fruit. "Gotta admit, the guy is twisted enough to do it, and be creative about it. No worries about us having to do it."

"But still," Yu Wang said, staring at the Amur leopard's back, and casting a particularly nervous look at Lang, "I don't like this. I don't like it at all."

"What don't you like about it?" Tan Lan asked, already seeing the possibilities flashing across his imagination. "Think of the gold, the spoils of conquest!"

Yu Wang pointed at Lang's back and whispered to his brethren, "I don't like how close the kid's getting to him."

Bao Nu shook his head, but still appeared to share the assassin's opinion. Koshchei was getting too chummy with Lang, and deep down he knew it didn't bode well for the rest of them. But the largest—and arguably the most dangerous—of the sextet formed his own opinions: "He's an omega, and if Koshchei knows anything about wolves, he knows the kid's expendable. Probably why he's being all buddy-buddy, get him to trust him, then sacrifice him or something. It's what I'd do."

Lan Duo, too, looked at Lang, studying how the short youth looked up—literally—to the leopard, who was regaling a tale from his northern homeland…something about a giant bear he'd wrestled, or some other similar boast. The apathetic wolf suddenly felt very uneasy, and for a rather emotionless, amoral person, that was truly significant.

Zi Hao, for reasons unclear, brushed off their worries. "As long as we don't have to face them directly, I really don't care. We have the strength of the pack on our side—Koshchei is one man, an old man, as he said himself. He may be strong enough to rip out White Wolf's guts, but one day, he'll be weak enough for us to take out. He knows it. We all know it. And if the twerp wants to get chummy with him, thinks that old man can save him from us, he's got another thing coming."

"Why do you hate him so much?" Lan Duo suddenly asked. The other four went silent, awaiting Zi Hao's answer.

"What?" the black wolf snarled.

"Why do you hate Lang? All he ever did was enter White Wolf's servitude."

"He is an omega. What more reason do I need?" the black wolf gritted out between clenched teeth.

"I think it's more than that—"

"Of course _you_ would think," Zi Hao snapped. "Your lazy ass doesn't do any damn work, so _all_ you do is think. So tell me, Duo, if you're so damn smart, what's your ground-breaking theory?"

Lan Duo stared at him for a long, unnerving minute. Then he said, "He reminds you too much of yourself."

The other wolves held their breaths, wide-eyed and waiting for Zi Hao to lash out at the other beta. But Lan Duo didn't give him the opportunity, brushing past him to walk closer to Koshchei. Yu Wang chanced a glance at their fearless leader, expecting to see unholy rage in his eyes. Never did he think that Zi Hao would ever look so unguarded, so shocked, so...shaken.

Wordlessly, the other wolves stepped up their pace to keep up with the jovial old leopard. The black wolf eventually caught up to them, but not without a haunted look on his face, and more malice-filled glares sent to Lang's back.

* * *

Captain Zang Deshi was not in the best of moods. His moods were difficult to tell to the untrained eye, but his small band of soldiers knew him well enough to know the difference between annoyance and rage, and contentment from joy. Lately, the latter two were nearly non-existent. The warhorse had once been the crowning achievement of the Imperial army, a masterful strategist and brilliantly decorated warrior. So it was surprising that such a decorated war hero would volunteer for such a low-level, otherwise detestable job, to bring in a dangerous man like Tai Lung.

None of Zang's men dared question why he chose this path, but to hear the black horse talk, most of the four assumed it had something to do with his honor code. To Captain Zang, the fact a murderer and violent sadist was still on the loose and had not paid for the deaths of his dearest comrades, the Anvil of Heaven, was an insult too harsh to bear. He had hand—er, hoof—picked each man in his small team. More than once, each of them had wondered what he was thinking, choosing only a small force to take down such a dangerous man as the Master of the Thousand Scrolls of Kung Fu. But therein lay his brilliance.

Tai Lung would have expected an army to track him, not a small band of marshals. If Zang needed backup, there were militias in every province from Heilongjiang to Guangdong. But his greatest weapon would be the element of surprise. That had been the plan from the beginning. It was foolhardy, foolish, some would say absolute insanity…but in all respects, it was crazy enough to work. Besides, Captain Zang would not have chosen the best of the best for nothing; though he had never met these men before, he knew them by reputation.

The elephant, Gao Ming, was by far the strongest warrior of the bunch, rivaling even the late Commander Vachir for strength. The great bull elephant was as physically imposing as he was strong, but against the stereotype, he was by no means a "big dumb guy". Unlike Vachir—with whom Gao had trained with—the elephant was patient and wise, the "Buddha of Basic Training" as he had been called at the military academy. Unlike the Buddha, however, Gao was not afraid to use excessive force when necessary, and relied almost too much on the cunning he picked up as a strategist trained under the very tenets of Sun Tzu himself.

The second horse, a chestnut bay draft horse named Liu Yong, was also well-noted for his endurance and strength—he fit the type of a stallion quite well. Liu had humble beginnings working on a farm in the western part of the empire, and certainly had some Mongolian blood somewhere in his line; his eyes, mane and tail were dark while his coat was a light reddish-gold. He was also massive and stocky, nearly as big as his pachyderm comrade, and yet was shorter and stockier than his thoroughbred general. Despite his oft-times impressive (and intimidating) musculature, he was as gentle as such a giant could be. He only entered the service for the travel. Intelligent, independent and free-spirited, he was all the personification of what a horse person was supposed to be…and that sometimes irritated Zang.

But as for the young tiger, Quon…on more than one occasion he had been questioned on this pick. The youth had little to say for himself; barely out of his teens, still a kid in all respects…but if Zang wanted him, there had to be good reason. Quon had yet to prove his chops; he hardly made an impressive show, as like most youths he was still rather on the gangly side, with little in the way in muscle definition. But Zang didn't keep him for his fighting prowess. He kept him because the boy was just that damn smart. Quon came highly recommended from the military academy, and he was just a second-year student! He knew eight languages, had high scores in arithmetic and geography, and even if he was a so-so warrior, it was his analytical and quick-thinking mind that was valuable to the warhorse. So many times he had seen otherwise small—some would say "weak"—men, and yet it was their brains that saved the day…well, decorated war hero he may have been, but Captain Zang Deshi knew that wars were not won on sheer brawn and bravado alone.

As they moved down the path, past the Xiao Tou Inn, Zang mulled over the information he'd gleaned from the guards at the Thread of Hope's gatehouse. He knew they were lying, or at least that they knew more than they were willing to say. But his instincts told him that they were not protecting Tai Lung; far from it. They probably didn't care what happened to the snow leopard; their only concern was protecting the Dragon Warrior. He respected that. He respected the Dragon Warrior, even if he didn't agree with his world-view. Politics aside, he was sure this Po Ping was a generally affable fellow, for surely the Grand Master Oogway would not have chosen a complete bastard to be the most powerful warrior in history.

He knew the talk about the Dragon Warrior, and even more so the talk about the Furious Five. He, like the rest of China, had been absolutely gob-smacked to hear that Master Tigress was married to Jiao Dalang. _Jiao Dalang_, the son of Jiao Shen! If that wasn't fodder for scandal, he didn't know what else would be! Still, he respected her decision, especially after hearing how _different_ Dalang was from the rest of his family. Zang had never met the young man, but he _had_ met his brother, Shang. Well, Jiao Shang wasn't such a bad man…he could have been worse. He was a still a monster, responsible for killing more than one of Zang's comrades in battle, but when out of his Dragon Rage, the Amur tiger had been remarkably polite, and even apologetic for the pain he had caused. Much in this way, Dalang was the same…without the miles-long rap sheet and terrifying homicidal tendencies. Had things been different, and had Shang never developed the Dragon Rage, Zang was sure that he and the eldest Jiao would have at least gotten along.

As for the rest of the Furious Five…he had no quarrel with them. He had met Master Crane, once, and was an acquaintance of Master Viper's father. Master Crane was a calm and patient man, but was a bit too cautious for Zang's taste, and his serpentine bride, the lady Viper, was a graceful and beautiful woman (for yes, he had seen the paintings of her), but to hear her father speak of her, she might as well have been a son for all the shenanigans she got into. Master Viper of the Furious Five was most certainly not a traditional woman, and Captain Zang liked traditional women (he was, however, wise enough to know never to say such things aloud either around or in reference to either female member of the Furious Five). He had never met Masters Monkey or Mantis, but knew by their reputations that they were great, honorable fighters…if a bit undisciplined. But as students of the legendary Master Shifu, how unruly could they possibly be?

What bothered him most, however, was that they tolerated Tai Lung's presence. Yes, he would grudgingly admit that Tai Lung had a hand in defeating and destroying the single most dangerous and bloodthirsty warlord in decades (an achievement Zang wished could have been his own), but that did not excuse his crimes. Jiao Dalang could easily be pardoned—he had killed no one (well, no one that mattered), never brought harm against the empire or its subjects, and worked his tail off to make the best of an awful life. Tai Lung, on the other hand, was given everything, and threw it all away; he threw away his honor and his dignity, and took countless lives down with him. Yes, he had served twenty years in Hell for his crimes against the Valley of Peace…but he still had to answer for his crimes against the army and against the Emperor.

They met up with a fellow of theirs, a rough-looking gorilla who crouched in the dirt, studying the prints left behind by the panda and snow leopard. The gorilla was dressed similarly to his comrades in mottled green robes, for camouflage, all of them trying to keep as low a profile as possible. When he saw his commanding officer approach, the gorilla straightened, pressed his meaty fist into his equally massive palm, and bowed. "Captain Zang, I have followed your orders."

"Excellent," the warhorse said with a slight smile. "What have you found?"

"No mistake, they were here," the giant ape said. "Overheard in the Thieves's Inn that they took the Red Bird Pass."

Gao Ming balked in amazement. "Good gods, outlaws are _still_ using it? I didn't think anyone was stupid enough to travel that…"

"I believe that says something about our quarry," Zang imparted with a dry tone. "You did good work, Sergeant Kong."

"So what now?" Liu Yong asked. "Tibet is out of our jurisdiction, and we don't know how long they'll be there."

"Is following them is out of the question?" Quon wondered.

"Following their footprints is," Zang said definitively. "Thieves and runaways are desperate enough to use that pass, but I will not risk your lives to follow a homicidal madman to the ends of the earth. Not yet, anyway." The black horse turned to look down the shady path that lay beyond the red gate, pursing his lips in thought. Then he swiftly turned his attention to Gao Ming, the elephant. "You are a master strategist. What would you do?"

Gao blew air through his trunk. "Not run after them, that's for certain. Tai Lung has been in the Valley of Peace for three years, and if the rumors are true, then he has quite a few contacts to tie him there. My instinct says he'll come back."

"Mine too," Zang nodded. "Yes, he will be back. No one at the Xiao Tou Inn was cooperative, Kong?"

The gorilla only bowed to the equine captain. "No one knew where they were headed except the Wu Sisters."

This drew a gasp from the other men. Zang, however, looked furious. "You had those murderous whores in your sights and you did nothing to bring them in?!"

Quon cleared his throat and spoke up, a desperate effort to quell the black horse's temper. "Permission to speak candidly, Captain Zang?"

"Granted," he said shortly. Quon was a quiet sort, but when he spoke, it was usually significant and worth listening to—and the tiger didn't disappoint.

"Sir, with all due respect, the Sergeant was woefully outnumbered. Had he even attempted to try to apprehend the Sisters…no doubt we would have found him floating face down in that lake's waters instead of alive and well in front of us." Once again, the young man's logic overruled the horse's temper; sometimes, though, the kid's common sense was a bit irritating. The tiger's cautiousness was very unlike his species, known for being brash and violent, but it was his discretion that had endeared the boy to Zang in the first place.

"Kid's got a point," Liu Yong said. "If he hadn't been alone, we'd have those girls in our custody—"

"Then we'd lose Tai Lung's trail," Quon argued. "As much as I want those women brought to justice, we already have a mission to carry out—the Wu Sisters can wait for another day."

Liu Yong shook his head, peering down the dark pathway. "What are your orders, Captain?"

Zang thought over his options. Then he stomped his foot once and turned in the direction they had come from. "We've followed the leads so far, but perhaps its time we took a more proactive approach."

"Sir?" Quon asked curiously.

"We will enter the Valley," Zang said definitively. "We will track down where Tai Lung lives, speak to his neighbors, his friends…if he has any. I want as much recent information on him by any means possible. As much as I wish it hadn't come to this, if we are to right the wrongs he has done, we need to know everything about him: his favorite foods, favorite colors, the way he likes his tea, I don't care. If we can glean anything and everything about him, any bargaining chip whatsoever, it will be easier to bring him to justice. Men, move out."

* * *

Far above their heads, looking down from the shadows of a small cave, three shapes watched as the quintet stalked down the path back to the Thread of Hope. One of the sentinel figures spit and grit her teeth.

"I _knew_ I should've slit his throat."

"Pretty glad you didn't, sis," Wu Zhu whispered. "Bad enough we're wanted for killing nobles, but army officers too?"

"He's not an officer, he's enlisted," Wu Jiang pointed out.

"Same difference!" the youngest sister hissed. "I don't want to face an army execution—do _you_?"

Wu Tian shushed them, fearful that their voices would echo and draw attention to them. When she was confident the soldiers were out of earshot, she drew back inside the cave, beckoning her sisters to follow. "None of us are facing that. We're going north again, along the Grand Canal."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Jiang asked. "Lotta people take that canal; opens the possibility we'll be seen."

"By the common folk, not the army," Tian said. "Commoners have nothing to fear from us, only the nobles do. We keep our heads down, act natural—"

"I think we should go after them," Zhu said suddenly.

Her older sisters stopped and stared at her. "Excuse me?" Tian asked. "Follow the _soldiers_?"

"No," Zhu said, "Follow Tai Lung and the Dragon Warrior. They don't know the army's after them."

"After _him_," Jiang corrected. "Tai Lung's a big boy; he can take care of himself."

"But the _army_ is after him, and it sounds like they'll do anything to get to him!" Zhu said fretfully.

"I fail to see how that's our problem," Tian said coldly.

Zhu's expressive blue eyes flashed dangerously, and she glared at her older sister. "What would Mamma say if she heard you say that? Hm?"

Tian froze, looking stricken, but quickly shook herself out of it. "She doesn't care, you know that. Not anymore."

"Gansu," Jiang said, breaking the tension. "We go to Gansu—there's more than enough space there, more than enough forests to hide in. It has stops along the Silk Road, in case we need to make an exit, stage left."

Tian let out a long breath, grateful for the subject change. Her red eyes settled on her youngest sister. "Gansu?"

Zhu sighed, crossed her arms and huffed like a disappointed teenage girl. "Fine by me."

"Good. If we leave now," Tian said, gathering her things. "We can reach Nanjing by nightfall. We'll follow the river until it leads to the Canal, and stop in Yangzhou for the night before moving north…"

But Zhu wasn't listening. Her eyes had traveled down to the red gate that marked the beginning of the Red Bird Pass. It wasn't until her sister Jiang nudged her and tugged on her arm that the youngest female snow leopard sorrowfully turned to follow her family through the labyrinth of caves.

* * *

Note: Many of the landmarks that I describe early in the chapter are real places, particularly the giant waterfall and the Buddha at Leshan. I tried to keep as close to geography as I could, but hey, its fanfiction, so I took a little creative license. The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal (the one the Wu Sisters mentioned) is a real waterway in Eastern China, which was first constructed during the Fourth Century B.C.E. and has been used continuously in various incarnations since then.

Hope you all enjoyed this chapter. For the record, don't expect the next update to come for a while. Until then, please read and review!


	8. Chapter 8: The Claws Come Out

Author's note: Please, please, please do not use any of my original characters without my permission; I will come after you. That said, Kung fu Panda and all its affiliates belong to Dreamworks Animation Studios, meaning I do not own any of the characters present from the movie or SotFF. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 8: The Claws Come Out

* * *

Master Viper was bored. And when Master Viper was bored, that was never a good thing. Despite her rather girlish reputation, all that tumbling and ribbon dancing in her childhood was merely indicative of an underlying condition that troubled her parents to no end. Grand Master Viper was fond of saying he never needed a son; his daughter "had enough energy for _twenty_ sons". So when Viper's father noticed her skill with ribbon dancing, he knew that she would take to kung fu better than _he_ had. And the truth was…he was absolutely right. To that extent, Master Viper of the Furious Five would be forever grateful to her father for not treating her as a "traditional" daughter.

However, the master of snake style was beginning to wonder if her father's patronage and Shifu's tutoring had an unintended consequence: she _hated_ to be bored. It was one of the things she and Master Tigress had in common; both females were very active people. Whereas Crane and Monkey were both perfectly laid-back, both females needed to be in the action. Viper, however, knew when to turn off; Tigress never did.

So when she knocked her tail tip on the door of the Long and Feng's kitchen the night after the Double Ninth festival, she was surprised to find Tigress answering the door dressed in her nightclothes and house-robe.

"Jeez, girl, you look exhausted," the serpent said with concern.

Tigress winced and sighed heavily. "Yeah…you can thank the two men in my life for that."

Dalang called from the pantry: "You weren't complaining earlier, admit it!"

Viper suppressed a laugh in her coils while Tigress sent her husband a dirty look over her shoulder. "I can guess what _Dalang_ did to, um, 'wear you out'… So what did little Shang do?" Viper asked.

Tigress opened the door further to let her friend inside. "He was a six-month-old cub, of course. I finally put him down to bed, so we'll have to be quiet."

"Damn," the serpent winked. "And I was looking for a little excitement. I kid!" she said when the striped feline sent her an annoyed look. "I'm kidding…let's face it, with Crane off doing 'man-stuff' with Mantis and Monkey tonight, I need to do something girly with my best friend, right?"

"As much as I'd love to go somewhere," Tigress said, "I'm absolutely exhausted. What with training and keeping up with my son—_and_ my husband—"

"I heard that!" the tiger in question called from the pantry.

"—the thought of going out so late…"

"So let's just stay here!" Viper offered. "There's tea, there's food…"

"There's _baijiu_."

"There _is_ _baijiu_," the serpent grinned. "A relaxing glass of wine between friends, what do you say?"

Tigress hesitated. "I'd better check with my husb—" but before she could finish the statement, Dalang popped his head out of the pantry, where he was taking an inventory, and handed her a bottle. "Honey, enjoy your company, or you will be punished."

"_I_ will be punished?" she smirked coyly. "Are you forgetting our respective situations earlier?"

Viper pursed her lips to keep from laughing as Dalang's face turned a bright shade of red. "_Tigress_!" he hissed, "Not in front of Viper!"

Tigress assured him, "Oh don't worry—she knows all the dirty details anyway." This time both women laughed as the chef's blush deepened, and he quickly retreated into the pantry to avoid any further mortification.

"I used to think he was shameless," Viper said as they took a seat at the kitchen table. "But embarrassing your man never gets old."

"As long as he knows it's light-hearted," Tigress said, pouring some wine for her friend. "So…Crane's off with Monkey and Mantis on a guys'-night-out? I'm surprised Sonam didn't go with them."

"Yeah, I am too. I guess Mantis and Monkey are still sore he moved out temporarily." Viper wrapped her tail around the wine glass and took a sip, humming appreciatively at the flavor. "Mm, _really_ good wine…"

Tigress smiled. "Thanks, it was a gift from Aunt Wu, so you'll have to ask her where she got it."

"I plan to! But you know, I guess I can understand where Monkey and Mantis are coming from. What with you moving down here, and me and Crane staying up in the Palace full-time, I guess they must be irritated by all the 'lovey-dovey crap' going on around them."

"Aren't these the 'Die-hard Bachelors' we're talking about? Thanks, sweetie," Tigress grinned when Dalang left out a plate of cookies. He leaned down and kissed her forehead before tossing the inventory list onto a shelf and left to go upstairs, thus giving them some privacy. Viper took an offered cookie and cocked her head in the chef's direction. "He's awfully quiet…more than usual, I mean."

Tigress groaned and held her head in her hands. "Tell me about it. I got him talking about his other brothers once—"

"Then you got mad at him for holding back, and he closed himself off again. What?" Viper asked when the feline glared at her. "You do that! Look, I understand it bothers you, but let's face it, any childhood with Jiao Shen as a father could _not_ have been a good one."

"I know—I know he doesn't _want_ to remember…but Viper, if I told him all the things about _my_ life, including my crushes and all the embarrassing things I did when I was a teenager…why can't he open up? I get the feeling he's hiding something…something _big_."

"Tigress, please," the serpent pleaded. "It's not like he killed anyone."

"Well..." Tigress hesitated, fingering her wine glass. "Only in self-defense. But I agree with you on that—I don't see him being violent, which makes him an anomaly amongst his brothers."

"But Shang wasn't _so_ bad, either. I mean, sure, the Dragon Rage didn't help, but he was otherwise merciful…even if it took different forms than we're used to." Now that two years had passed, Viper regretted the things she had said about the Amur tiger at the time she had met him. All she knew was that, one, he was a Jiao—which automatically made him bad news in anyone's book—and two, he had come between two people so very much in love, and had potentially ruined, perhaps forever, the happiness of a dearly beloved friend. In hindsight—which, true to the adage, was the clearest sight of all—Shang never intended any harm. He was an honorable man battling demons both real and imagined in the form of his family, and in his own degenerative disorder. The Dragon Rage…no one knew if it was a disease, contagious like typhus or plague, leaving _any_ warrior susceptible to develop it…or if it was something one was born with. Either way, in the end it little mattered; fortunately for such a tortured man, he died as peacefully as he ever could have hoped. Having heard more stories about him from Dalang, and from other warriors who had known and fought him, Jiao Shang was _definitely_ an anomaly as far as the Jiao family went.

"I wonder so much about what happened," Tigress confessed, running her finger along the glass's rim. "Sometimes I catch myself wondering if Dalang and I hadn't worked out, and if he'd lived, if I'd be with Shang instead."

"With _Shang_," Viper asked with a scandalized look, "Who probably had more mistresses and children running around than the Emperor himself? You would've hated that."

Tigress smirked, taking a sip of wine. "I know—that's usually what snapped me out of it. That, and realizing that Dalang was a better man than I ever could have imagined."

Viper giggled. "I'll say. Who knows how fate works? If life carried on the way we expected it to, I would be with Suresh instead."

"And you would have hated _that_."

"Oh definitely. There's a very good reason I never introduced him to Daddy. You know," the serpent tittered. "After Daddy met you all the first time, he asked me about Crane…and Mantis."

"No! _Mantis_?" Tigress laughed loudly. "Oh yeah, _there_ is a match made in heaven!"

"I know!" Viper giggled. "But he also told me that Crane would be a, quote, 'suitable alternative', unquote."

"Imagine that," Tigress teased, grinning as her friend blushed. "But I'm glad it worked out for you two. I knew Crane had a soft spot for you, but I didn't know he loved you."

"Who knew?" Viper sighed with a shrug of her coils. "There I was, looking for love all over the place, and it was right in front of me all along. I don't think a better romance could have been written."

Tigress made a sour look. "Judging by the books you used to read, I can say that much with confidence."

"Oh hush! Some of them were actually pretty good." Viper took another sip of the wine and leaned back in her chair. "Still, I'm glad my parents like him so much. It really made it so much easier. I was worried what they would think…turns out the one I really needed to worry about was his mother."

Tigress stayed judiciously silent, opting to take a large mouthful of wine to cover what would have been a very caustic remark.

Viper scowled. "Honestly, she's not that bad!"

"Viper," the striped feline said with a no-nonsense look, "that old harpy _hates_ snakes—and you, by extension. I don't see what her problem is. Anyone who's ever met you has loved you immediately. You're a sweetheart, and even our _enemies_ think that!"

Viper stared at the wine still in her glass. "I don't think it matters, does it? I have a love match with a wonderful man, a man most girls only _dream_ of, so what more do I need?"

"I'll tell you what _you_ need, young lady," Tigress said, raising her voice to a wheedling, high-pitched tone…in perfect imitation of Mrs. He's condescending vernacular.

Viper blushed, and pleaded, "Oh no, Tigress, _don't_…"

"What _you_ need," the feline continued, with full pantomime in complete mockery of Master Crane's mother, "Is sons, and _lots_ of them! Oh, but you can't _give_ me grandchildren, can you? No, I suppose if you _did_, they'd be scaly, winged little _freaks_!" Tigress quickly dropped the mockery and took another sip of wine, muttering an unfortunate and unforgivable name under her breath.

"Fine," Viper sighed. "I suppose she can be a bit…difficult. But all we need is some time, and I'm sure we'll become good friends."

Tigress snorted. "Sorry, but as much as Dalang loved his mother, I'm actually kind of glad I don't have to deal with a mother-in-law like yours."

Viper scolded her, "Tigress, I'm sure Ming Hua was a lovely woman!"

"I'm not saying she wasn't!" Tigress said, pouring more wine for her friend. "But I think both my husband and I are glad we didn't have to deal with in-laws when we got married."

"But my mother-in-law _does_ have a point…"

"_No_, no, she doesn't. Don't listen to what that woman says—she's just bitter Crane didn't marry—"

"That he didn't marry Mei Ling?"

Tigress bit her lip and covered another comment with another awkward sip of wine. But Viper only smiled and shook her head. "Don't worry about it; I can understand why Mrs. He felt that way. Mei Ling is such a nice person, and was very sweet at the wedding. I don't know why Crane didn't initially want to invite her…"

"The same reason Dalang didn't invite his ex-girlfriends to _our_ nuptials. Crane probably didn't want you mad at him."

"For what? He was marrying _me_, not her, right? Besides, I saw her eyeing that old schoolmate of theirs…she's _definitely_ moved on by now. Still, she's a very, very sweet woman. I'm sure whoever she marries will know he's a lucky man."

The pair fell silent for a long moment. Viper looked up after taking another cookie; Tigress was staring through the open doorway at the family altar, and probably at the ancestor tablet…

"I wonder what my parents would have thought of Dalang," she spoke up at last. "I don't remember my father; I don't know if he died when I was a baby, or if he was a laborer who went to the city looking for work, and just…never came back. All I remember was me and my mother." She smiled and suddenly laughed. "Like, I remember she had a hard time getting me to wear dresses! And pink, and lavender—she loved those colors and couldn't imagine a little girl who didn't. She'd get so mad when I'd come home covered in mud or scrapes from running around…"

She sighed and rested her chin in her palm. "I remember she read me stories, and hugged me all the time…so I know she loved me. She also loved to dance, used to be a court dancer, I think, but I'm not sure. She told me she married for love…and that she hoped _I_ would marry for love, too. We could've had a lot of money, and security, but she must have loved my father very, very much, to choose him over a rich man."

"Then I'm sure she would have approved of Dalang," Viper said with a warm, supportive smile. "If I was your mother, I would!"

"I know…" the striped feline smirked. "As I recall, you were the one arranging the match from day one."

"Judge, jury, and executioner," the serpent wryly joked, making Tigress laugh. The smile quickly faded as she looked back at the altar.

"That's all I remember about her. I was really young when I went to the orphanage. I don't even know how she died…I just remember one day she was there, and the next, she was gone, and I was in Bao Gu. She's buried somewhere on the other side of the valley," she said, pointing out the door, "But no one can remember exactly where. And no one knows what happened to my father."

"Maybe he's still out there."

"Maybe," she answered, without expressly agreeing. She drained her glass and set it aside then let out a deep sigh. "I'm really glad you came to visit."

"Why, is something wrong? Oh!" she gasped excitedly. "Are you pregnant again?!"

"No, Viper, _gods_ no!" Tigress laughed. "I'd like for Shang to be _at least_ a year old before trying again! It's just been a bit…hairy around here, lately."

"You mean Sonam? I thought you two got along?"

"Oh, we do…but it's _him_, plus a very pregnant snow leopard, and a very sad panda…"

"_Ohh…_" Viper nodded. "I see…and with the baby, you must be so drained. No wonder you're training so much…just a way to get out of the house for a while…"

Tigress rubbed her tired eyes. "It's a lot of things. Doesn't do me any good that Po and Tai Lung are both gone and if you tell _anyone_ that I'm actually missing Tai Lung…"

"Your secret is safe with me." She didn't understand why it had to be a secret. She didn't understand why Tigress still harbored resentment towards the snow leopard. Did it have something to do with the battle at the Thread of Hope? Or was it lingering resentment towards Shifu that got misdirected at Tai Lung? Either way, for whatever reason, Tigress still did not like him…at all. She respected him, sure, but she wasn't about to hug him and proclaim them 'best friends forever'. Or…maybe it was a front? Maybe Tigress actually did care…

Viper noticed it was getting late and decided to excuse herself. "I'd probably better get home before it gets too late. I don't want Crane to worry."

"He will, anyway."

"I know," Viper fondly smiled. "Give my love to Dalang and Shang."

"You bet." Tigress stood and escorted her friend to the door. "And say hi to the boys for me."

When Viper slithered out the door, she looked back to see Tigress gazing up the slope of the Jade Mountain, her fiery red eyes trained on the palace at its peak. Viper knew that look, that soulful, longing gaze that told her so many things. Most importantly, that although Tigress was happier than she had ever been, there was still the lingering sense of something missing…an odd nostalgia for the days when it was still all about training and victory and glory. And as much as Viper hated to admit it, she missed those days too, somewhat.

She made her way home, thinking about the night—however short—she had spent with her best friend. They didn't do that nearly as often as they used to. But that was part of growing older and moving on with life…and had Viper known how much she missed those glory days before her marriage, before Jiao Shen, before _Po_…she would have appreciated those days more.

* * *

Mei Xing had just settled into bed when Sonam knocked and poked his head in the door. "It's been two hours, love."

Mei Xing tried her best to hide her frustration. Her father-in-law was in one of his overprotective moods again. Since her low-blood-sugar incident before the Moon Festival, the old snow leopard had made it a personal crusade to make sure it never happened again…which meant she ate something every two hours, whether she was hungry or not. She understood she was eating for two, but this was overkill.

"I'm not hungry."

Sonam ignored the complaint, coming in with a full tray and two bowls of Ping's noodles. "I don't care if you're not hungry—a woman's body can trick her into thinking she is or isn't feeling something. Nima thought she had a bad flu when we found out she was—" and right at that moment, he stopped short, immediately cutting himself off. With stony silence, he set the tray down on a nightstand and took a chair opposite the bed.

_Crap_, she thought. _Should I say something_?

He wasn't offering anything, so she took up a large bowl of noodles and started to gingerly sip the broth. Even if she wasn't hungry, she at least had to make a show…for his sake. She glanced up at him over the bowl's rim. Though only in his mid-sixties, Sonam looked quite old, no doubt a result of the hard life he'd lived (not to mention the scars the Jiao had given him). Lately, though, he looked even more drawn and weary, and tired more easily than she did. She couldn't help but wonder what exactly was bothering him. She knew he wasn't sick—perhaps he was slowing down just because of his age?

But Mei Xing knew it had to be more than that. Sonam was not the kind of man to slow down unless he was physically incapable of any movement. He clearly didn't believe in retirement. He took to the Jade Palace's forge with a determination and energy more suited for a man forty years his junior. It was the same energy and drive Mei Xing loved about her husband; consequently, both Tai Lung and Sonam were about as stubborn…though Sonam swore up and down that his son got it from his mother.

Maybe that was it: maybe it was both… He was worried his son was gone on some dangerous journey, and ran the risk of losing him again…and he was also worried about something happening to Mei Xing, just as something had happened to Nima. So she decided to make the plunge and ask. "She thought her morning sickness was the flu?"

His ear was the only part of his body that moved as it ticked up to listen. He stared down at the floor, sitting backwards in the chair with his arms folded on the backrest. Mei Xing decided to try again. "I thought I had eaten something bad…wasn't until I put everything else together that I realized what was wrong…or, well, _right_." She hesitated. "I thought I couldn't get pregnant, you know. I thought with the abuse I suffered, I'd become infertile…or that maybe I was never fertile at all."

"Seeing how soon you were expecting after you got married," he finally said, "I doubt that. I've more doubts about your first husband's prowess than yours."

"I'd thought of that," she said. "We only ever had girls—"

"Which he blamed on you, of course," he snorted.

When they fell into silence again, Mei Xing tried eating some of the noodles, but was still full from dinner. She knew if she kept eating, she would make herself sick, but didn't stop because he was watching her very carefully. She did pause, however, to get her second wind…but also to follow on the instinct she had:

"I hope that asshole is still childless. I hope his family line ends with him. I hope he's doomed to be a ghost for eternity. Maybe those thoughts will put my baby at risk—ow!—or maybe not," she winced, pressing her hand against the spot where the baby had kicked. "But I don't wish any good for him."

"Who would?" Sonam asked rhetorically. "Who'd ask for good for anyone who did harm to us? Some folk are just mean-spirited from the get-go; no fault of their own, maybe, but there's no point saving anyone who doesn't want to be saved."

The oppressive silence told her that he wanted to ask, but felt it was none of his business, that she wasn't ready to talk about it. And the part of her that was still affected by her first marriage knew better than to talk without being spoken to first. But this was Sonam! Sonam, of all people, would not chastise her or hit her for speaking up—hell, if the stories about Nima were true, that meant he loved women who weren't afraid to speak their minds. Well, this wasn't exactly speaking her mind…more like getting something off her chest.

She stared down at the bowl in her hands, which she put back on the tray, feeling sick again, but not from overeating. "The first time I miscarried was the first time he hit me. I had done everything I could to keep from having another stillborn, but I lost the baby anyway. No one comforted me; they all told me it was my fault, that I was cursed, and that if I couldn't have a son I was worth less than a slave."

She couldn't identify the look on Sonam's scarred face, but it made her uncomfortable. She had started, and like a levee breaking up, there was no way to stop her even if she tried. "One night I made this really complicated dinner to try and cheer him up…I don't even remember what I made, just that it took me all day to make it, just for him. He hated it; he took one bite and dragged me from the room…" she hugged herself, feeling even more nauseous. "He took me to the refuse pile and forced me to eat rotting vegetables, and chew sand. 'This is how your cooking tastes', he told me, 'Do you think I like eating this slop?'. I was sick for days after that, and my teeth hurt so much I couldn't eat."

Sonam's hands clenched into fists and his jaw was firmly set, but Mei Xing saw a familiar look in his eye—cold, murderous fury. She promptly shut her mouth, a reflex from her first marriage. "I'm sorry…if anything I cooked was bad, if you didn't like—"

"Stop," he snapped. "Girl, don't you _dare_ apologize."

She lowered her gaze, staring at her large stomach. She ran her hand over it, trying to calm herself as well as the baby, who had started kicking again. "…I've never told anyone about that. I don't think Auntie even knows about it. I almost told Tai Lung, once, but I'd also said a bunch of other things my ex had done or said and…he just looked so angry, I didn't want to say anything else."

"He wasn't angry at _you_," the old snow leopard said. "And _I'm_ not angry at you, either. Now, where's this ex-husband of yours live?"

"The largest village in central Yunnan. Why?" she asked, suddenly suspicious.

"No reason," he shrugged. "Its been awhile since I was last in Yunnan—maybe I'll take a holiday there, come spring…maybe stop in and give the old boy a visit…"

"Sonam, I don't want you killing him."

He gave her an innocent look—which, naturally, she didn't believe. "Never said I'd kill him—just a visit."

"Uh-huh," she said, unconvinced.

"Look, Mei," he sighed. "I know it's tough to talk about it—much of my past I don't like talking about either. Anything you don't want to tell me, don't tell it. I won't pressure you. I _will_ however take up my old disguise and personally dispatch that son of a whore for you—but only if you want it."

"No."

"Are you sure? I'm very good at making things look like accidents."

"If he suddenly ends up dead, I'll be immediately suspected."

"Over my dead body, you will be."

"That's exactly what I'm worried about." She looked back at the bowl of soup on the tray and pressed her fingers to her lips. "I feel sick."

"You want me to get you some tea then, love?"

"No. I just want to go to sleep." She sighed and slowly lowered herself into the pillows, laying partially on her side. Mei Xing stared up at the ceiling, seeing Sonam moving out of the corner of her eye. He had picked up the tray of food and wordlessly left the room. She sighed again and closed her eyes, willing herself to think of something other than her past. Instead, she focused on her current marriage, on the wonderful man she felt blessed to call her husband. Tai Lung truly loved her, and would lay down his life for her, as she would do for him.

But thinking of him only made his absence that much more pronounced. She looked over to his side of the bed, noting just how empty it looked. She ran her fingers across the bedding, ghosting over his pillow. Mei Xing hesitated, then took his pillow from its place and held it against her cheek. Gods, it still smelled like him. She didn't even notice that tears were streaming down her face while she hugged his pillow against her body as she fell asleep.

* * *

Su Lin was the first one awake that morning, as had become her habit lately. Since moving into the Long and Feng's private apartments, she had gotten used to sleeping in a little. But now with Po and Tai Lung gone, and Mei Xing under doctor's orders to have frequent bed rest, she took on more responsibilities around the restaurant than usual. Despite protests from both Dalang and Mr. Ping, Su Lin still woke at the crack of dawn to start the fires in the kitchen, and to chop vegetables and other ingredients for the chefs to use once the restaurant opened.

Once she got the fires crackling and the ingredients for the breakfast dumplings prepared, she pulled out a pan from the cupboard to make her own breakfast. She then proceeded to unlock the door to the courtyard on her way to the stove. Unfortunately, as soon as she opened the door, the female panda saw a huge, hulking figure casting a long shadow over her.

She reacted as anyone else in her situation would have. She screamed…and promptly slammed the pan into the offender's face. It hit him with such force that he toppled backwards immediately, and felt a firm imprint of his face in her once-pristine pan. Su Lin stared at the imprint the gorilla's face made in her cookware, then gasped when she saw the gorilla wasn't the only one waiting for her.

Again reacting out of instinct, she grabbed for a drawer and drew out one of Dalang's prized chef's knives, holding it out in front of her. "Stay back!" she yelled.

One of the would-be assailants, a bay horse with dark mane and tail, held up his hands and soothed, "Easy, ma'am, we're not bandits."

"You're dressed like bandits! Now get out or I'll…I'll…I'll do something not very nice!" She inwardly groaned; of all the things she could have said, it had to be _that_?

Someone darkly chuckled and stepped to the front, completely stepping over his dazed primate comrade. Su Lin drew back at the height and breadth of the black warhorse, feeling an uneasiness she had never before experienced. "L-Leave now," she said as firmly as she could. "Leave now, or there will be trouble."

The black horse smiled thinly. "Oh believe me, little girl," he said smugly, "You do not want to cause trouble with—"

"What the hell is going on?" someone demanded. "Who the hell are you?"

Su Lin turned to the stairwell and saw Mei Xing standing on the last step, one hand on the small of her back and the other holding onto the doorjamb. The pregnant snow leopard was staring right at the black horse, whose eyes had widened with interest as soon as he saw her. Mei Xing, however, gave him a hard look as she descended the last step and walked over to them.

"Looks like you're not welcome here," she said, fists on her hips.

"And it would appear you are a lucky woman," he said, his eyes trained on her round belly. "Am I right in assuming this is the home of Tai Lung?"

"Where I come from," the snow leopardess said harshly, "You're supposed to answer the questions people give you before asking any of your own. It's generally considered good manners."

"And where _I_ come from," the black horse snorted. "Women know their place."

"Well I got news for you, honey," Mei Xing snapped, "You're not in your territory anymore—different rules apply here. Now tell me who the hell you are or I'm calling the brute squad."

Behind the black horse, a huge elephant snorted, "I'm on the brute squad."

"You _are_ the brute squad," Mei Xing said, mildly impressed with the elephant's sheer size.

"Madam," the warhorse at the door said, "I don't know—nor care—where you came from, but you would do well to learn to hold your tongue in a man's presence."

"Show me a real man and maybe I'll hold my tongue," she snapped.

"_Mei_," Su Lin hissed, taking her elbow. "I can take it from here…"

"Are you sure?" the feline asked.

"Yes, I'm sure." And she was; seeing her friend standing up to the rather intimidating horse was enough of a confidence boost that Su Lin could use to get rid of these strange men. She knew, logically, that they weren't there to hurt them. Bandits and murderers would not have exchanged insults and threats like this; they would have robbed and killed them by now. And seeing the way this horse was behaving ignited something primordial in the female panda, a certain hot-blooded anger that she didn't know was dormant inside her very species. So now the panda drew herself up to her full height, still clutching the knife she'd used to defend herself, and turned back to the horse.

"Introduce yourselves, now." She hesitated. "Please."

"Much better," the horse said, and Su Lin felt her cheeks grow hot…but not from embarrassment. The black horse straightened and said, "I am Captain Zang Deshi of the Imperial Army Investigations Division. My associates and I are here on an exploratory venture. Now, if I may introduce," he moved aside and pointed at each man. "Corporal Liu Yong, First Lieutenant Gao Ming, Cadet Hu Quon, and Sergeant Kong Li. We are investigating Tai Lung—"

"He hasn't committed a single crime in three years," Su Lin said sharply, and hotly. "You have no reason to be here. Ask anyone in this village, in this _valley_, and they'll all tell you he's a good—"

"Perhaps you're from the same place as your expectant friend," Zang interrupted. "I will not stand here and let a woman talk to me like—"

"And like _she_ said, you're not in your territory anymore!" Su Lin snapped, raising her voice. She pointed at herself, "You're in _my_ territory, sweetie. And if you keep talking to me like that, I'll teach you the respect your mama never did!"

Mei Xing's jaw dropped, and she wasn't the only one. Zang was so awestruck by the rotund female's scathing reply that he was rendered completely speechless. Su Lin crossed her arms carefully, the chef's knife still in her fist. "Yes, Tai Lung lives here. And he's not the only one who lives here. And he won't be the only one unhappy hearing how you talked to us. So get your act together and treat us the way you want _us_ to treat _you_."

Zang reined in his temper and took great care in controlling his tone. "Very well, Miss…"

"Yu Su Lin," she answered, "of the Chengdu Yu clan. You might've heard of my mother, Yu Na."

"I…_have_ heard of her, actually," he said, genuinely and visibly impressed. "And now it explains so much."

Su Lin beamed with pride. Mei Xing smiled a little at her friend while swiveling her ears forward so as not to miss a single word the horse said.

"But as I stated," he continued, "My associates and I are here on an investigative mission concerning Tai Lung's rehabilitation. If he meets all the criteria, he may be eligible for an Imperial Pardon."

Mei Xing carefully sat down, shocked, and a little hopeful. Su Lin, however, looked dubious. "Uh-huh…well, I can tell you where to start."

"Not here?" he asked.

"We're not open yet. Come back in a couple hours. But go talk to the Chin family, down the way, by the laundress's home. Tai Lung helped them renovate their house last summer."

Captain Zang nodded once, then looked back over the female panda's shoulder to look directly at Mei Xing. "Are you Tian Mei Xing, Tai Lung's wife?" he asked her.

Mei Xing felt an unexplainable chill. "I am."

"And that is his child you are carrying?"

"Yes," she said, fighting down the growl. "Of course it is. What are you implying?"

"Oh, nothing," he replied flippantly. "Just that I've heard some things about you…such as that you are divorced."

"Yes, that's true…"

"And that your first husband is still alive."

Su Lin glared at him, knowing immediately what he was really saying. So did Mei Xing. "He is still alive," she growled. "And if you know anything about me, you know my reasons for leaving him."

"That excuses nothing," the captain said. "Women do not desert their husbands just because they beat them. A woman is beholden to her husband and he is lord over her, just as a slave is to his master, no matter how he is treated. She puts her life in his hands without question…or a real woman is supposed to, anyway."

Mei Xing paled at the insinuation and started to look a little faint.

Su Lin gripped the knife handle a little tighter.

"The only reason I ask, of course," Zang continued, "is more for Tai Lung's benefit than mine. Surely he knows what kind of woman he married, but it might help him knowing that child is really hi—"

The force of the punch sent him spinning and he hit the cobblestone courtyard face-first. Then someone grabbed a fistful of his mane and began dragging him to the front door. With a swift yank upwards, he came face-to-face with an enraged panda, whose normally sweet brown eyes were now darkened with rage.

"Go back to where you came from," she hissed in his face. "You are no longer welcome here. Now you _and_ your men: Get. Out." With that, she shoved him out the door and sent him sprawling into the dusty street. When she turned to the startled soldiers, she pointed out the door with knife still in hand and barked, "OUT!"

Knowing that discretion was the better part of valor, the three conscious soldiers carried their unconscious gorilla comrade through the moon gate, following their disgraced leader down the street.

Su Lin took a deep breath and let it out slowly, yet was slightly alarmed how hot her face was, how light her head felt, and how rapidly her heart was beating. But more alarming was her behavior: what in heaven's name had she done?

"Su Lin?"

The panda turned to find Wu Lien standing outside in the street, mouth slightly agape. The matron was completely dumbstruck, and so was her young ward. "Su-Su, dearest," Wu said gently. "Is everything alright?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly. "How much did you see?"

Wu looked down the street after the soldiers with wounded egos and remarked, "I _heard _the punch, then _saw_ you drag that man by the hair and throw him into the street. Now, I mean this as kindly as possible, but what in Heaven's name happened?"

Su Lin stared down at her hands. Then she looked back at the red panda, a look of pure consternation on her sweet face. "I…I have no idea."

* * *

"Yup, you've got a pretty nice shiner there, sir."

Captain Zang winced as Liu gently applied a poultice to the injured eye. The quintet had abdicated to a silent bar where they could get a hot meal and something to treat their illustrious leader's black eye…and Kong's king-size headache. When they had taken their respective seats at the bar, Gao had asked for some rubbing alcohol for the scrapes caused by the female panda literally dragging the black warhorse out the Long and Feng Café's door, and Quon had made sure to order the captain's favorite meal; the tiger, of course, was always working in the best interest of the team, and the team's best interest was keeping their captain's temper under control. Kong kept his silence after a healthy dosage of painkillers and a cool wet towel to his bruised face.

Zang winced again as he pressed the poultice against his eye. "She's Yu Na's brat all right—ow—as I recall, Mrs. Yu had a decent right hook in her own right…"

"Is it true, what they say happened to her and her family?" Quon asked.

"Sadly, yes." Zang hissed as the medicine began to do its work. "I thought there had been no survivors, but it appears I was mistaken. Jiao Shen's influence ran far and wide. Shame, too; Mrs. Yu was a very gifted healer."

"Way I heard it," Gao said as their food arrived, "she could give out wounds almost as bad as the ones she treated."

"Yes, she was legendary," Zang said, almost bitterly. "Gifted in the healing arts, better than most men I've known…"

"But still a panda," Sergeant Kong said.

"What's wrong with pandas?" Quon asked as he accepted his stir fry dish from Gao.

"Nothing," Kong shrugged. "Just keep in mind that they might look cute and cuddly…but they're still bears."

"I remember one panda who became a really notorious bandit—he was in my training class, back in basic," Liu said. "A better warrior than the strongest tiger…and would rip your face off if you gave him a reason to—I'm serious, I saw him do it once! Kong's right; bears—especially pandas—are nothing to sneeze at when they're angry. And I hate to say it, sir," Liu said, frowning at the black horse, "but you crossed the line back there. Dunno about you, but my family never raised me to talk to a woman like that."

Zang snapped, "You'd do well to remember your place, Corporal…or should I say _Sergeant_?"

Under threat of demotion, Liu promptly shut his mouth.

"No, Liu's right," Gao said in his comrade's defense, struggling a little with the chopsticks in his large hands. "Besides, didn't you hire _all_ of us because we aren't afraid to speak our minds?"

Zang glowered and picked at his meal, before giving in to his hunger and shoveling stir-fried vegetables into his mouth. As he ate, someone had walked into the bar—someone tall and lanky—and sat in the empty stool next to him. "Heya, Chen! One special!"

"One special comin' up," the proprietor called back. The chow-chow dog smirked at the newcomer. "Drinking on duty?"

"Nah, it's my day off—but don't tell the Mrs. I came 'round, right?"

"Sure, Dalang, my lips are sealed."

Zang choked in surprise and snapped his head up to look at his neighbor. Jiao Dalang settled into his seat and glanced back at the horse. The tiger's yellow-green eyes settled on the horse's swollen and bruised eye almost instantly. "Been in the valley one day and you already got a shiner? You're not good at making friends, are you?"

Zang still stared at him, then recovered and asked, "Forgive me for gawking, sir, but you're not _Jiao_ Dalang, are you?"

"Depends who's asking," the tiger said evenly.

The horse smirked and he replied, "It is an honor and a privilege to finally make your acquaintance. I am Zang Deshi, _Captain_ Zang Deshi."

Now it was Dalang's turn to be surprised. "Zang Deshi? The same Zang Deshi who secured my pardon?"

The horse nodded with a surprisingly warm smile. "The same."

"So we finally meet," the chef remarked after a long, pregnant pause. He accepted the drink that the bartender placed in front of him and took a few sips. Dalang didn't look back at the horse. "Couldn't be bothered to come by before? What, having second thoughts about that pardon? You're a little late for that; only the Emperor can revoke it, and I haven't done anything to warrant that. To my knowledge."

Captain Zang merely smiled disarmingly and shook his head. "Not at all; you're golden in my book, as well as the Son of Heaven's. I'm here for a different investigation. This is one that I…would rather see to personally. More in depth—"

"More in depth than mine?" Dalang asked suspiciously, watching the horse over the rim of his glass, and glancing at the soldiers sitting next to him at the bar.

"You had plenty of people to vouch for you, people with influential names," Zang described. "People spoke highly of you, people whose reputations rendered their testimony without question to their integrity. I believe the lady Wu Lien was most instrumental…"

"Auntie tends to have a lot of influence," Dalang agreed. "Though not as much as my father-in-law."

Zang stared at him, then realized, "Ah, you must mean Master Shifu. Yes, now I remember…how _is_ Master Tigress? Last I heard, she was expecting."

"Our son is six months old, now."

"Ah, wonderful, congratulations," the horse said with a smile, but he sounded less than enthusiastic. "Are you planning to have more?"

"Why don't you tell me what you're doing here? And why you get your jollies terrorizing my friends?" the tiger said with a chilly smile.

Zang regarded him much more carefully than he had previously. As much as he knew Dalang was not dangerous like the rest of his family…he was still a Jiao. "We did not mean to startle your…lady friends," he said carefully. "We are conducting an investigation for a certain Tai Lung."

"Yeah, I got that much. Is my word as good as Wu Lien's, and Shifu's?"

"Of course."

"Good. I would trust Tai Lung with my life. In fact, I have, many times, and I've never been disappointed."

"So I hear. Let me assure you, Mr. Jiao, to fully explain myself and my mission: it has come to the Emperor's attention that, since his escape from Chorh-Gom prison, Tai Lung has undergone many humanitarian operations for the benefit of the Valley of Peace, and the greater population of China…things that would not have happened otherwise if he were still imprisoned." Zang paused for emphasis. "Given that his record in the past three years is…startlingly consistent, the Emperor has considered pardoning his jailbreak."

The tiger took another sip of his drink, rolled his shoulders and flicked his ear a couple times. "And the crimes that led to his incarceration in the first place?"

"Twenty years was deemed a suitable length of time for his punishment, and His Excellency the Son of Heaven considers that debt paid," Zang said. "The only issue lies with his escape and the deaths of the Anvil of Heaven."

"Well that didn't take long," Dalang muttered with a sardonic chuckle. "Despite what you think, he's a good man, and you're right; if he was still in prison, my Old Man Shen would still be alive and still terrorizing the empire—and you owe that to Tai. I think of him as a brother; he was there for me when my brother died, and he helped me recover from my wounds…he's the brother I wish I'd had my whole life. In fact, _everyone_ who lives under the roof of the Long and Feng Café, I consider my family…which brings me to why I'm here."

"You're not here for a drink?"

Further down the bar, the four other soldiers had stopped eating and were watching the tiger chef very closely, casting worried looks at their captain and praying he didn't lose his temper again.

"Could be I'm here for a drink," the tiger chef shrugged. "Could be I'm just enjoying my day off. 'Course, I _could_ be here because someone," Dalang said with a strained tone and a fierce glare directed at Zang, "insulted and threatened two women I consider sisters. That restaurant is my home and my property, and I will not tolerate anyone treating my home and family like you did."

"I suppose you want an apology."

"I'm not the one you need to apologize to." He leaned in close and growled in the horse's ear. "Make no mistake—if I _ever_ hear you talking like that to _anyone_ in my house again, I will end you—pardon or no pardon."

"Are you threatening me?" the horse snapped.

"Just here for a drink," the tiger said nonchalantly. Dalang drained his glass and set it back onto the bar, paid his tab and stood to leave. He turned back to Zang and gave him the same winning smile that he gave to every cantankerous customer he dealt with…a smile that carried a hidden threat.

"It was nice meeting you," he said with an ironic smirk, then turned to leave. But he froze, staring down the bar, past Zang's head, his face suddenly pale. Zang looked over his shoulder to find what he could possibly be staring at, but all he saw were his own men. The warhorse turned back to Dalang and asked, "Are you all right, Mr. Jiao? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Dalang blinked and shook his head. "I'm fine; must be the drink. Like I said, it was nice meeting you. But don't bother coming 'round to my restaurant until you've learned some manners." With that, he sent a wave to the proprietor and walked out.

Liu finally broke the heavy silence that followed the tiger's exit. "He's a lot more…intimidating than I thought."

Gao snorted at the understatement.

"I thought he seemed nice," Quon said. "Well, as nice as he could be, under the circumstances."

"I didn't think tigers could get that big," Kong said, unable to hide the wariness in his voice.

Gao shuddered. "The scary thing is that Jiao Shen was _bigger_."

"And so was Jiao Shang," Zang said, staring at the door that Dalang had just walked through.

* * *

"Did you kill him?"

"No."

"Can _I_ kill him?"

"_No_."

"Oh you're no fun anymore."

Dalang couldn't help but smirk. He had gotten this same exchange when he'd first come back home from Chen's Tavern; once Sonam heard what had happened, the old snow leopard was livid, and ready to go on the warpath to preserve his daughter-in-law's honor. But now that Dalang had—blessedly—calmed the blacksmith down, he had to instead handle the fallout from another overprotective and temperamental feline.

"I would've murdered him," Tigress snarled. "Who does he think he is?!"

"The guy who got my head out of the noose, that's who," he said darkly. But he smiled and picked up his son as Shang was trying to crawl away. Dalang sat cross-legged on the floor, enjoying the rare play day with his son, and Shang loved every moment he spent with his Daddy. The baby gummed his father's fingers and spit out bits of fluffy fur, but giggled and purred the whole time. Finding that it was a slow day, Su Lin had left Mr. Ping to handle the restaurant while she got caught up on much-needed mending and ironing; she sat with the felines, still shaking from her encounter that morning…and the current topic of conversation didn't help.

"Officer or no," Tigress continued, "He had no right to talk to you like that," she said, looking over at Su Lin, who had laid out a pair of trousers to iron. "—and what he said to Mei! If he'd treated _me_ like that, no one would ever find his body!"

"I have a feeling he's more of a misogynist than anything else, and didn't mean any real harm," Dalang said as he handed his son a rattle. "But he's not stupid—I think he knows better than to treat _you_ like that."

"Because I'd deck him?" she asked.

"No, because _I_ would," he smirked.

Tigress leaned down and affectionately kissed his cheek. "I love my husband."

"And I love my wife," he replied, grinning as she sat across from him and opened her arms to Shang, who giggled and crawled over to her.

Su Lin huffed and licked her finger to test the heat of the iron before pressing it against the ironing board. As she spoke, she pressed down furiously onto the board, almost enough to scorch the garment stretched across it. "I couldn't believe the way he was treating us…like we were lower than peasants! And what he said to Mei…if Tai were here, why, that stupid Captain would be keeled over!" She sighed heavily and set the iron back onto the wood stove to heat up again. "That said, I really didn't mean to hurt him. And what if my losing my temper hurts that investigation he was talking about?"

"You actually buy his story?" Tigress asked as she tickled the baby, and grinned when he squealed happily.

"Why, don't you?" she asked them as she laid out one of Dalang's shirts.

"Not a chance," Dalang replied. "If he were really concerned with Tai Lung's freedom, he wouldn't have treated you two like that. He's hiding something, and I don't like it. If he's smart, he'll stay away."

"In that case, I hope he's as dumb as a sack of rocks," Tigress smirked. "I haven't thrown a good punch in a long time—I need to see if I still got it."

"But assaulting an army officer?" Su Lin fretfully said, then gasped when she realized, "Oh no…gods…I could be in serious trouble!"

"Not by the Valley's laws, you're not," Tigress said. "Around here, we have a 'castle law', that if anyone—an outlaw, thief, what have you—invades your house and you suspect they mean you physical harm, you have every right to kick their butts...or kill them, if necessary. And they can't do anything about it."

"But he's an army officer!"

Tigress shook her head. "Doesn't matter. And by the way, if he _does_ come back looking for trouble, you let _me_ handle him."

"Honey…" Dalang warned. "Its bad enough _I_ threatened him. You might be one of China's heroes, but I think the Emperor would find fault in attempted murder."

"Exactly—that's why it'll be _me_ kicking his tail, and not Sonam."

Sonam, of course, took offense to that; he stuck his head out of the nursery's doorway while he worked on constructing the crib. He griped, "But what exactly _is_ 'attempted murder', anyway?" he asked. "I mean, _really_, do they give out medals for 'attempted bravery in combat'? I think not!"

"Sonam, you're not helping," Dalang growled.

"But he's right," Su Lin said. "My mama had the same idea…no one came into her house unless she gave her permission. That was her biggest rule; Papa was the one who enforced it, because no one really listened to what we women had to say…at least, no one who didn't know Mama."

"Sounds like a right battle-ax, your mum," Sonam said as he rubbed sandpaper against the wood. "I think I would've liked her. What I don't get," he said, casting a concerned look towards Su Lin, "Is why _she_ was known for her tough-as-nails personality and why _you_ are so…erm…"

"Passive?" she offered, her ears lowered against her head.

Sonam looked guilty, and even Tigress and Dalang were uncomfortably silent. Su Lin looked at the felines and sighed. "She wanted me to be a real lady. She told me to always mind my manners, _always_; and that most men weren't like Papa, and they wouldn't like a girl who spoke her mind. Much less if she were violent; what kind of man would want that?"

"No comment," Dalang quipped, dodging a playful smack from his wife.

Su Lin continued, "Mama got mad, sure, but most of the time, those people deserved it. She didn't want to ruin my chances of finding the right man to marry…"

"But Po doesn't care about that," Tigress said.

"What if he _does_?" Su Lin asked. "He's never seen that side of me before."

Dalang was surreptitiously silent. The two of them shared a look that spoke volumes, and was swiftly followed by an uncomfortable silence, broken only when the chef coughed and covered, "Well, I don't know about Po, but _I'm_ glad you grew a backbone. I don't like to think what could've happened this morning if you hadn't."

"You don't think it's a bad thing?" the panda asked.

"One thing's for sure, love," Sonam said definitively. "If the big baddie from Po's vision is coming here, growing a backbone just might save your life."

Tigress gave him a harsh look after Su Lin paled. "Don't worry so much about it," Tigress said. "I'm sure that whatever the threat is, that Tai Lung and Po can handle it; and if they need backup, the Furious Five will be right there behind them…every step of the way." But she added silently …_At least I hope so…

* * *

_

The morning after Po and Tai Lung arrived at the Phoenix Temple, they were awoken by the sounds of bells chiming in the early morning, well before dawn. Still groggy, both warriors dragged themselves out of bed while the monks shot up from sleep, fully rested, and began their walk to the main temple for prayers. Po and Tai Lung fell in behind them, but were stopped at the door by one of the most senior monks, a graying lion with a salt-and-pepper mane, who beckoned them,

"You will not be joining in the services. Master Sun Bear requests your presence in the main courtyard, promptly. Follow me."

They wordlessly followed, their stomachs rumbling from lack of food and feet dragging on the ground from exhaustion. Their trip had taken more out of them than either of them realized. Even Tai Lung was nervous about beginning warrior's training so early, and on an empty stomach.

The old lion led them down the corridors, before coming upon the main courtyard near the gates to the monastery. As expected, Sun Bear was already there, standing quietly with his hands hidden in his sleeves. He waited as the pair approached and promptly nodded in greeting.

"_Namaste_," Sun Bear said, pressing his palms together and slightly bowing his head. "Welcome to your first lesson."

"Nama…" Po paused. "What's that word again?"

"'_Namaste'_," the master replied. "It is a traditional greeting from southern Asia, and it is also the greeting that yogis give to each other."

"_Yogis_?" Tai Lung asked, feeling the strange word on his tongue.

"The plural of 'yogi', who is a practitioner of yoga," Sun Bear explained before crossing his ankles and gracefully lowering himself into a cross-legged position upon the mat. He dismissed the old leonine monk with a short nod. "Yoga is a gift from southern Asia, an exercise that utilizes all parts of your mind and body, bringing the yogi self-awareness, flexibility, inner strength, and more importantly, inner peace. The very word 'yoga' has many meanings, but for this case, the easiest translation is 'to control', and that is exactly what we shall try to accomplish. Take your places on the top of the rugs, over there," he pointed to two well-worn red rugs, three feet wide by six feet long.

Po and Tai Lung shared a look before warily obeying, the snow leopard asking, "So is this another form of fighting? Some lost style of kung fu? OW!"

Sun Bear had hit him again with his trusty bamboo staff, once again appearing from out of nowhere…that they could see. There were visible veins throbbing on the old master's temples. "No, you fool! Yoga is by no means something you _master_. I have been practicing it since boyhood and would _never_ call myself a master."

"So what's the point if you can't master it?"

"That _is_ the point, Master Tenzin," the old bear said flatly, "The point is that you let go of the weights that are keeping you down, to try and transcend the limitations your mind and body have given you. You, being feline, are naturally better equipped for these exercises. Shang, on the other hand, is at a major disadvantage, one that we shall rectify as soon as possible. First, I want to see how flexible you are." He tapped his staff on the stones. "Touch your toes."

Panda and snow leopard shared an incredulous look. Was he serious? The old bear's stony silence told them he most certainly was, and they wordlessly followed the order. As expected, Tai Lung had little trouble, managing to go so far as to press his palms against the stone tiles before him. Po strained, barely able to touch his fingertips past his shins. But even if Tai Lung had done as Sun Bear ordered, the old master had quite a few things to say about him.

The Master slapped the bamboo staff against the backs of the cat's thighs. "Straighten those knees! Tighten the stomach muscles. Don't forget to breathe."

"I _am_ breathing!"

"You are not breathing _correctly_." He sighed, "It seems I need to start from the very beginning. Alright, sit in full Lotus position on the mats…" Sun Bear sighed again, fighting down what was sure to be a powerful migraine when he saw that the panda was completely unable to get into the proper seated position. "Master Shang," he growled, "You can use half Lotus."

"Thanks…" Po said sheepishly.

"Now, listen closely," Sun Bear said, sitting in front of them. "The Breath is the cornerstone of this exercise; controlling your breathing, being aware of the breath as it enters and leaves your body makes you more aware of the rest of your body as a whole. It is practiced to develop your physical, mental, and spiritual strength.

"With every inhale, push the breath to the back of the throat; it will make a hollow sound. Try it."

They waited for Sun Bear to demonstrate, and when he didn't, they tried to figure it out on their own. Well, that didn't end as they had hoped. Sun Bear frowned and bopped them both on the head with his staff. "WRONG! To the _back_ of the throat! Try again."

"Look, if you would just demonstr—OW!" Tai Lung had bit down on his tongue when the staff hit his head again. "Bloody hell, man, I was just asking a harmless question!"

"Five _jiao_."

"I don't have any money!" he complained. "You took it all with my other possessions!"

Sun Bear quickly retorted, "I'll put it on your tab. Again!"

Po nudged his friend to go along, and Tai Lung sighed and closed his eyes, trying the meditative breath Shifu had taught him long ago, when he was still just a child…

"Better," Sun Bear nodded. "Much better. But not good enough. Again."

They obeyed, many times before they had gotten it to the point that satisfied the master. "Not bad. It will do. Now, we will begin on the stretches. I reiterate: yoga is not something you master, that is why we are called _practitioners_, not masters.

"We will start with the standing poses. Stand at the top of your mats." He waited until they had stood before beginning the demonstration. "We will begin with Mountain pose, then Downward-facing Dog, followed by Extended Side angle, then finish with Warrior pose. Follow my lead, and remember, do not force yourself. Listen to what your body is telling you. If you are hurting, ease up. The point of this exercise is to relax and strengthen your body, not hurt it. Let's begin…"

He followed through with his instruction, leading them through the various standing poses, keeping a close eye on their body positions, and correcting them with his staff whenever he felt it necessary. The snow leopard, of course, executed each pose with expected flexibility. However, his balance was off, and those poses meant to open up the chest and strengthen the back were in fact doing the opposite. He corrected the cat's posture with the staff, taking care not to hit him _too_ hard while he was in Warrior pose, lest he topple over.

The panda, on the other hand…well, he most certainly needed flexibility training. As a fellow ursine, Po felt that Sun Bear probably knew his pain. But how could the old bear be so flexible? Even Shifu, who never let up on his own training, had started to feel the effects of arthritis. But Sun Bear was as slight and as spry as a man fifty years his junior, and if this 'yoga' thing was the old master's secret, then Po was perfectly content learning all he could about it.

Finally—and mercifully—Sun Bear instructed them to sit. He proceeded to the seated poses: spine twists, hamstring stretches, forward bends, side bends, wide straddles and the deceptively simple forward leg stretch. Tai Lung had scoffed this was a simple stretch, with the legs straight out in front of them, the goal being to touch the fingers to the toes…but much to the snow leopard's surprise, he felt quite a bit of strain in his thighs, calves, and back that he had not noticed before. And come to think of it, his arms felt heavy and tired, as if he had carried too much weight, when he had not done so much as a single push-up.

And if Tai Lung was starting to feel sore, Po was in absolute agony. The panda grunted and sweated profusely, amazed that such simple stretching techniques could have him working up such a sweat. For the first time, he was grateful for the cool air at the top of the mountain; to do this in the South Asian heat would have been downright brutal. But the thin air made it that much harder to breathe, and many times Po gasped like a fish out of water. When Sun Bear mercifully called for them to rest from the seated forward bend, neither warrior could hold in the relieved sighs.

Po was amazed to find Tai Lung was as worn out as he was. Master Sun Bear, however, seemed to be expecting this.

"So…not so easy, is it?" he asked them with a wry smile.

"I don't get it," Tai Lung panted, sucking in as much air as the thin atmosphere would allow. "It's just stretching…"

"It is _proper_ stretching, Master Tenzin," Sun Bear corrected. "The difference between the stretching you are used to and yoga is that yoga focuses on the Breath. Stretching for vigorous activity is more focused on the flexibility and preventing physical injury. Here, we are preventing physical and _mental_ injury. You have both performed better than I expected for beginners…" he paused, peering intently at the pair. Then he sighed raggedly, "But as I expected, you pushed yourselves too far."

"How can you tell?" Po panted.

"Once you get up from Corpse pose," the elder said, slowly lowering himself to his lie on his back, and indicating they do the same, "You will see what I mean."

He closed the session with a period of quiet meditation, leading them through it, though he need not have bothered. When he sat up, he did so as nimbly as a cat and rolled up his own mat. "I would take my time getting up if I were you. Just be grateful I didn't introduce the backbends in this session. You are both dismissed; I suggest spending the rest of your day meditating on your lesson. Good day."

"Wait, that's it?" Po asked, sitting up suddenly. That was a huge mistake. He gasped, sucking in breath from the shock of red-hot pain in his middle. The sudden tightness in his muscles took him by surprise, and he fell flat on his back again, knocking his head hard on the paving stones.

Sun Bear shook his head. "I think that's all you two can tolerate today. We will not resume until two days from now, to give your bodies time to rest. Go meditate, and let me repeat: get up _slowly_." With that, he left the courtyard, instructing a trio of teenage monks to follow him to their next lesson. The orange-robed monks had stood by, quietly watching the lesson, while the five young red-robed novices giggled and snickered at the poor newcomers' plight.

Tai Lung just lay there for a good few minutes, feeling strangely at peace, his mind clearer than if he'd simply been meditating. He turned his head to look at the panda and asked, "How're you doing, panda?"

"I can't feel my neck."

"…That's generally not a good thing, P—Shang."

"Gee, _Tenzin_, you think?"

"Don't give me that lip; I'm trying to be helpful."

After a moment of silence, both staring up at the sky, and feeling slightly silly for being there, lying prone in the middle of the courtyard, Po finally asked, "You can't move either, can you?"

Tai Lung let out a strained breath. "Let's just say I haven't felt this sore since I was ten, when my old master decided to 'further develop my flexibility'."

"Do I want to know what methods he used back then?"

"No. No you do not. They still give me nightmares."

After another pause, Po tried getting up, rolling to his side and pushing up on his arm. The muscles strained and ached, and when Po finally succeeded in sitting up, no amount of massaging could make the muscles quit screaming in agony. _No pain, no gain, right?_

He was starting to doubt the legitimacy of that saying.

When Tai Lung finally sat up and stood, the snow leopard faltered, then grabbed onto the panda's shoulder to steady himself. "That was more intense than I expected."

"Yeah, but…I feel pretty good," Po said. "Y'know, like I'm…at peace, you know?"

Tai Lung nodded. "I know. I do too; feel at peace, that is."

Another pause followed.

"Wanna go see where they keep the painkillers?" Po asked.

"Let's go."

* * *

"I must be really out of shape," Tai Lung said later, while they were on their way to dinner. "I mean, I train all the time, make sure to stretch, keep myself limber, and I'm _still_ sore…" he winced under Po's glare. "I'm not one to talk, am I?"

"_Who's_ the big, fat panda here?" he reminded.

The dinner was exactly as expected: lukewarm rice and weak tea. It was so incredibly tasteless that both warriors struggled to swallow the bland food. No spices were used. No pepper, or ginger, not even salt was used to flavor it, and there probably wasn't any soy sauce for miles. And the tea was more like lightly-flavored hot water. Still, knowing this was all the food they had to look forward to—something that depressed both culinary connoisseurs—helped them consume it. The knowledge that their breakfast would be plain oatmeal—again, plain, with no flavoring at all—made their stomachs churn in protest.

Another hour of meditation followed, and a bell was rung to send the monks to bed. Neither panda nor snow leopard felt particularly tired, each one lost in their own thoughts, their bodies aching too much to make sleep much of an option. Nevertheless, they retired to the cells they had been assigned to, and laid atop their blankets, hugging their robes closer around their bodies to fight off the chilly mountain air.

Tai Lung could hear Po shivering through the wall, and felt a wave of pity. He had gotten used to temperatures like this in Chorh-Gom; at that time, he'd only had his trousers and the tortoise shell on his back to fend off the cold. Who knew that twenty years of that hell would eventually help him? Po, however, was used to the more temperate climes of the Valley of Peace. The poor guy would suffer tonight, if the smell of snow in the air was any indication.

Snow.

A wave of panic overtook him. If it snowed soon, it would make his trek home impossible, unless he left soon. And leaving Po here, alone, through the whole winter… But what about Mei Xing? Was it snowing in the Valley? Was she getting worried? He knew she had essentially ordered him to go on this quest for his own good, but he knew she would get nervous. He was worried for her. Was she healthy? Was the baby well? What if she—gods forbid—went into labor early, and he wasn't there for her?

His thoughts were cut off by the sound of teeth chattering. He sighed and got up, moving next door to peer into Po's cell. The panda was curled up under his blanket, still clutching his robes as close to his body as possible. Tai Lung marveled that someone with as much…insulation…as the panda had would be cold in a place like this, but he decided not to question it. Instead, he crept into the cell and laid his own blanket over his friend and watched him a moment before slipping back to his own cell. He lay on his back, staring at the rock-hewn ceiling until he heard Po stop shivering. He closed his eyes after sending a last prayer to the gods to watch over Mei Xing…and as he fell asleep he hugged his robes tighter around him, as if by some stretch of the imagination, he could envision her arms wrapping around him in their slumber.

* * *

As predicted, the next day they were both still sore. Po looked worse for wear, and quietly complained of the lack of sleep, to which Tai Lung had to concur. After this shared whine, however, they bore the pain with quietude. Not because of their sense of dignity, but because they figured their complaining would earn them more hits to the head from a certain bamboo staff.

This morning, they joined the monks at the main sanctuary for prayers and chants, then walked to the Great Hall for breakfast. The pair were glad they were not the only ones finding it hard to choke down the porridge: the younger children looked especially unhappy, but ate it anyway. The red panda novice looked particularly forlorn, and Po suddenly realized with supreme consternation that the child looked unhealthily thin. After the silent breakfast, the monks departed for their respective roles. The younger monks and novices left for their lessons in religion, philosophy, and beginner's kung fu, whilst the older monks prepared bags and baskets for a trip down the mountain to the village.

Meanwhile, Po and Tai Lung had no instruction whatsoever. Tai Lung, of course, wanted to practice his kung fu, but his muscles were still too sore from the day before; experience had taught him that muscle strain was sometimes worse than a broken bone. Po, naturally, was still exhausted and wanted little more than to sleep for the rest of the day.

"Just try meditation," Tai Lung whispered. "You can always fake it."

"I got a feeling Sun Bear would know," the panda replied. "You gonna meditate too?"

"I'm going to the library," he answered, drawing his woolen robes around himself. "I'm about as fond of full days of meditation as you are of that old goat, Mr. Lu. I need to keep my mind occupied with something or I'll go mad."

Po nodded and stood. "Okay, I guess I'll…" he cast his green-eyed gaze over the deserted main courtyard. "…find someplace to sit."

Tai Lung gave him a halfhearted smile. "It's not so bad. Think about it, this training could be a lot worse."

"Though I don't wanna give our master the motivation to make it really hard for us, y'know?"

"Believe me, I know," the snow leopard groaned, massaging his sore bare bicep. "If you feel like joining me, you know where I'll be."

* * *

He had to be silent. A class of five novices was being conducted by an old ox, who was teaching them the finer points of the language arts, while the same two monks from his first day sat at their desks, inscribing old scrolls into newer ones. Opting to stay as far away from them as possible, Tai Lung crept along the innermost walls, deep into dark corners where even the light of his candle didn't seem to give enough illumination.

The further back he went into the library, the dustier the shelves became, making him sneeze periodically, and unintentionally disrupting the novices' class. So further back he went, holding the folds of his robe over his muzzle even as the dust stung his eyes. Tai Lung kept walking until coming upon a wing that was even darker than the ones before. Massive cobwebs hung like veils across the opening, where beyond was a small alcove with a low ceiling, and scrolls and bound books lining shelves that had been hewn from the bare bedrock.

Naturally curious, the snow leopard stepped inside, ducking the cobwebs and minding his step on the floor. To his surprise, there was not as much dust here; in fact, the shelves, the floor, even the ceiling was remarkably clear of dust, debris, and evidence of arachnids. In the very back of this alcove was a short desk, upon which a little dust had settled.

He set his candle down and peered at the shelves, his pupils dilating to see in the dim light. Most of these bound books were histories, books of poetry and literature. A few were original journals, and other various primary sources.

Then his eyes widened as he settled upon a remarkable title. "The Great Fight: Testimony of Zhanshi Feng".

Zhanshi Feng…the Phoenix Warrior? It had to be; how many other names in China and Tibet literally translated to "soldier of the phoenix" and were housed in the library of a temple dedicated to the aforementioned warrior?

He grabbed it, carefully opening the cover, which crackled and snapped, creaking like a rusty-hinged door. Carefully leafing through the crinkled, water-damaged pages, the snow leopard found more information than he had ever bargained for…particularly the foreword written by…

Could it be? Could it really be…?

"_There were too many of them. The Dragon Warrior and I had to retreat, retreat like cowards. 'Twould be better to die in battle, despite what my comrade says: 'better to be a live coward than a dead idiot'. His pacifism almost got us killed, and now will shame us until the end of time. Should anyone discover the truth, of what really happened in that battle, they would spit on our graves."_

Wow, the snow leopard thought, whoever the first Phoenix Warrior was, he was hardcore.

"_He can try to justify it however much he wants, but I know the truth: he was afraid to die. I've died before—it's not so bad. There's comfort in knowing what awaits you…yet now I'm cursed with this 'blessing' my dear friend is responsible for. He's drafted the Dragon Scroll, which he will bestow upon a worthy successor when the time is right. As for myself, I need to leave behind some measure of wisdom, which is neither a strength nor a delight of mine. Still, if there is truly a second Phoenix Warrior out there, somewhere, who will carry on my legacy, perhaps I may finally rest._

"_To his satisfaction, I shall hide the Phoenix Scroll's secret, as the Dragon Warrior hid his. The secrets in the Dragon Scroll are so dangerous that it needs to be locked away, and mine more so. He is a fool for hiding such a dangerous weapon in plain sight. No. I will bury my scroll so far into the earth that no mere man could discover it."_

Tai Lung ceased reading and stared into space. He was reading the words of a man who had been dead for over a thousand years, words that were written in his own hand. The snow leopard carefully trailed his fingers over the parchment, brushing over the faded ink, and felt an excited thrill at the thought he was touching the very page that had been touched by his predecessor. He felt…connected to this warrior, this stranger, this hero. Yet he also discovered a strange feeling…that he _knew_ this writer, he knew this warrior, as impossible as it sounded.

_Nothing is impossible_.

The snow leopard skipped forward a bit, carefully turning the pages until he came upon an incredible ink and watercolor painting…the page awash with scarlet, depicting a scene that nearly made the feline sick. Tai Lung was used to graphic violence; he had committed some violence of his own. But the illustration on this page and succeeding pages were too much to bear. It was a total bloodbath. Enemy soldiers killing women, children, old men in their beds, and performing such unspeakable acts on any captured slaves, and men and orphaned boys being rounded up for slaughter. But what were worse were the illustrations of torture, more gruesome than anything Tai Lung could have imagined. Soldiers, farmers, anyone trying to protect themselves and their families were massacred before his eyes with such excruciating detail…

Tai Lung stepped away from the book to suck in some much-needed air, but the smell of old books and mildew turned foul in his mouth, making him gag. He needed to put that book back, and perhaps find some quiet place outside to deposit the meager contents of his stomach. When he turned back to the book to close it, he noticed the next page had a torn corner, with writing peeking from behind it; he turned it and again saw the Phoenix Warrior's handwriting:

"_Such are the scenes from the Great Fight. Pictures are worth thousands of words, and it is lucky I have some measure of artistic talent to depict these events. Otherwise, the true story of that battle would never be known. The true story of those atrocities would never be told, and those poor souls who lost their lives would have died for nothing. If I had stayed, had died in battle, I would have died taking down as many of those bastards with me as I could. Whatever the Dragon Warrior says, there is no way my testimony would ever say or do enough. Words will never convey the violence of my emotions, only pictures will suffice. For really, what more can be said?"_

What more, indeed…

Tai Lung closed the book and put it back. Picking up his candle, he stepped out of the back room and made his way back to the main chamber. Even the low light the scribes worked by stung his eyes, so used to the enveloping darkness that any stronger light blinded him. The scribes didn't look up when he blew out his candle and set it aside. Drawing his robes closer around his body, the snow leopard quickly left the library, and made straight for the main courtyard, to tell Po of his discovery.

* * *

Po sat in meditation in the main courtyard, practicing the special yoga breathing Sun Bear had taught him. He didn't seek to perfect it—wasn't the point of yoga not to be perfect in it? Instead, the panda tried focusing on the sounds from around the monastery, instead of his breath. He wished he could have gone there sooner, for, ironically, this place gave him a peace he had not known in the Valley of Peace. In the Valley, there was always energy, motion, and in the Jade Palace, there was too much noise, too much training, for him to truly appreciate the stunning vistas seen from the Jade Mountain's peak.

But here, it was as if time stood still, and he felt it in the monastery, from the faded blue tiles at the top of the pagoda to the paving stones he sat upon. There was history here, memories that flitted through the corridors like ghosts from eras long past. Everyone here seemed to behave far beyond their years. The small red panda novice, for instance, had a quietude and gravity that far exceeded his age, behaving more as a battle-weary soldier than a seven-year-old child.

What truly surprised the panda was how _silent_ this place was. The only sounds he heard were the tinkling of prayer bells and the wind whistling through the peaks. He felt he was both outside nature and a part of it. He had never been able to reach this kind of meditation before, where he was aware yet unaware…and in this instance, mostly unaware.

"Enjoying yourself?"

Po opened his eyes and looked to his right, spotting Master Oogway sitting next to him in a meditative pose. The panda couldn't help but smirk, "Glad you didn't hafta knock me out to get my attention this time."

"This time," the tortoise nodded in agreement. "I am glad you got here so swiftly; I always enjoyed my visits to the Phoenix Temple. Sun Bear was and always will be a dear friend, and hospitable host."

Po gaped at him. "_Hospitable_?"

"Like I said, he is unorthodox."

Po sighed and looked about. He was back on the spectral plane, sitting in front of the Pool of Sacred Tears; this was the only indication that he had passed through the portals to this landing. "I get the feeling he doesn't like us."

"My old friend has odd behaviors, but compared to me, he is quite ordinary," the sage said. "I used to annoy Shifu with worse transgressions."

"I find it hard to believe _you_ trained Shifu," Po said. "I mean, you're so tranquil, and he's so…"

"High-strung?" the tortoise finished for him.

"Yeah."

"Perhaps that is my fault—when Shifu was young, Sun Bear came to visit the Jade Palace once; he imparted many things upon my student, his cynicism being one of them. Teenagers are quite more pliable than most people believe."

"So you've known Sun Bear a while?" Po asked, trying to find any information on his new teacher. It was a vain attempt to see how he could get on the bear's good side…if there was one.

"I have known him since he was a young man." Oogway smiled nostalgically. "I saw quite a few similarities between him and Tai Lung, actually. Though I shudder to think how Tai Lung would have fared under Sun Bear's tutelage and not Shifu's."

"What d'ya mean?" the panda asked. "They seem to have a lot in common."

"More than you know." Before Po could question further, Oogway continued, "As you know, I created kung fu for the weak to be able to defend themselves. My favored styles were always reactive. Sun Bear's favored styles are proactive."

"Isn't that a good thing, though? Why wait for the bad guys to hit first when you can stop them from hitting at all?"

"For the same reason that I warned you about judging people," Oogway said. "Recall, I warned you that those once perceived as enemies will prove to be friends, and those you thought you could trust will in turn betray you. Kung fu is not about 'hitting first and asking questions later', as Sun Bear was fond of saying. Kung fu is about _protection_. It helps to be prepared, yes, but remember the teachings of Master Frog…"

"…The frog doesn't chase after the fly," Po recited. "The frog sits on the lily pad and waits for the fly to come to him."

Oogway smiled. "Exactly. Knowing _how_ to fight does not mean you should use it to solve all problems. Do you know why?"

"Because fighting doesn't solve every problem," Po said. "But I knew that since I was a kid—my dad taught me that."

"Sadly, that was a lesson Tai Lung never learned." Oogway sighed and shook his head. "Whether it is his being a predator, or if it is Shifu's tutelage, or if it's just his personality, Tai Lung never quite understood that kung fu is for _defense_, not offense."

"So why send him to Sun Bear if that's what Sun Bear teaches?" Po asked curiously. "If you don't want Tai to be aggressive and learn more defensive stuff, why send him to train with a guy who only teaches how to attack?"

"Because he is not the only one who needs to learn a lesson," the tortoise cryptically said. "Now listen closely: I have come here to inform you…keep your eyes open, Po Ping. Keep your eyes open for what you seek. The answers to the greatest mysteries are often in plain sight. During the course of your stay here, I will visit your dreams and meditations more often, for I foresee you needing guidance now more than ever. Tai Lung will also have a spectral visitor visiting him."

"Why can't you visit both of us? Wouldn't that just make it easier?"

"One would think." Oogway hesitated, then quietly said, "Easier for us spirits, yes; easier for the two of you, no. For the depths of your friendship with Tai Lung, there are still things he keeps from you, and things you keep from him. Things you are both ashamed of, things you would not tell another living soul unless you trusted them beyond a shadow of a doubt."

"What kinds of things could he be hiding?" Po wondered. "I mean, being claustrophobic isn't anything to be ashamed about—I'm afraid of heights, and I know there's no shame in that. Everyone's afraid sometimes. So I guess…what is he afraid of?"

Oogway fell silent, with a gravity that told Po that perhaps whatever secrets his best friend still kept from him, they were potentially damaging to their friendship. "It is not for me to reveal," the old sage said. "When Tai Lung is ready, he will tell you. Some secrets he may never be ready to expose. Whatever his reasons to keep things from you, all you need know is that he does it because he cares for you and values your friendship very, very much…in fact, he values it more than anything I've ever seen from him."

"Okay," Po nodded, looking unconvinced. "I'll take your word for it."

"Please do," Oogway smiled. "Now, I believe you have some questions for me?" The way the tortoise smiled, Po knew he'd been expecting the inquiry that was coming. The panda thought how best to ask, how best to pursue his curiosity without being too nosy. Po thought a moment longer, then asked, "The other day, Sun Bear mentioned that the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior knew each other."

"They were brothers in arms, yes."

"Did you know them?"

Oogway fell silent again, and appeared suddenly distant. Po started to regret asking. "Is it a sore subject?"

"It was many years ago…" Oogway said, looking decidedly forlorn, a sad, reflective gleam in his eyes. "So many years, so many memories…" he hesitated, then continued, "Whatever Sun Bear has told you, I can assure you it is misleading. He has spent the better part of his life protecting the secrets of this mountain and this temple. You will find that the first Dragon Warrior kept his secrets in plain sight; the Phoenix Warrior kept _his_ scroll hidden, and hidden it shall remain, until his successor comes to claim his title."

"So there _is_ a scroll, and me and Tai just need to find it, right? It's gotta be in the Phoenix Warrior's tomb, right?"

Po knew there was little Oogway could actually confirm, but it was what the tortoise did not say that was the most telling of all.

"In time, Po, Tai Lung will find the answers he has been looking for…and in time, you will come to learn all the things I should have told you, but never did."

"Okay…" But it wasn't okay. Though he tried to deny it, Po still felt a bit sore that Oogway had passed into the next life without adequately telling him just what being the Dragon Warrior entailed. The panda had ascended to becoming a being of ultimate power and all he had to show for it was a lousy scroll. And it was a _blank_ scroll with a reflective sheen…it might as well have been worthless if Po hadn't figured out the symbolism.

But that told him nothing about what was expected of him. Learn kung fu, sure. Be an honorable warrior, no problem. But beyond that, what was his destiny? What did his title even mean?

He opened his eyes and found himself back in reality, sitting on the cold stones of the courtyard, and now shivering in the cold shadow of the pagoda. His vision had abruptly ended without further consultation with Oogway, and left him with many more questions than before.

"How curious," a voice said behind him. Po whirled around and saw that Master Sun Bear had snuck up behind him, and was studying him very carefully. "I thought you had been bluffing when you said you knew some kung fu—you have learned its principles very well."

"Well, yeah," Po said, slowly standing and brushing dirt off his robes. "My whole life, I dreamed of being a big, tough kung fu warrior, and, y'know, I thought if I learned about it, and tried to live like I was one—y'know, _become _it, I guess—that learning to fight would be easy. And when I first learned some stuff, yeah, it was hard, but I _really_ wanted to follow my dream because…well, it was my _dream_, y'know?"

"Interesting," was all he said in return. Sun Bear scrutinized him for a long, tense moment, and said, "You are an interesting study, Master Shang. I confess I took you for a fool when you arrived two days ago, a fool and a charlatan. But you are proving my first impressions were mistaken—the first thing I noticed just now, as you were talking about kung fu, is just how much brighter you looked—your eyes shine like a child's when you speak of kung fu. You are indeed a man following his dream, and that I admire." He smiled thinly. "Reminds me a bit of myself. A bit."

Po pressed his lips together and looked down at his feet. "A man? Weird…"

"How so, if you don't mind indulging my curiosity?" the old master asked.

"Well…" he hesitated, then rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. "See there's…well, sometimes I just don't _feel_ like a man, I guess. I mean, I got this girl back home—"

"Of course," the old bear said sardonically. "Do continue."

Po gave him a hard stare, not liking his tone, but continued, "She's everything to me. She's really special, and smart, and yeah, she's very pretty, but that's not the only reason I like her. But she's so awesome, and so smart and talented that…I just don't feel worthy of her. And my dad wants me to take over the family business; he doesn't mind I want to learn kung fu, but I know what he really wants—"

Sun Bear held up his hand. "Stop. Let me see if I have this right. You came across two empires to this temple so that you could _impress a woman_?"

"No!" Po snapped. "I came here because I wanna know my place! I don't know which path I should take—if I should do what my dad wants me to do, or what _I_ want to do, what I feel is right in my heart!"

"I see," he replied, though it sounded like he had already passed judgment. "So like Tenzin, you are seeking your purpose."

"Well, _duh_," Po said sarcastically while rolling his eyes. "Why _else_ does someone come all this way to a temple in the middle of nowhere? It ain't for their health, I'll tell ya that!" He shrank back under Sun Bear's glare and stammered a quick apology. "S-Sorry…"

The old master only arched a bushy grey eyebrow and glowered in a way very reminiscent of Master Shifu. "No, that was spoken from the heart. I appreciate such honesty. If I didn't, I'd be a terrible monk. However, while you're here, I'd like to work on your problem with bottling things up—your communication skills are dismal." With a flourish of robes, the old master started walking away. "Enjoy the rest of your day off—tomorrow, the real work begins."

Po sighed and sat back down for another round of meditation, but didn't get very far when the old master hailed him.

"By the bye, Shang," Sun Bear said over his shoulder. "I've been rather curious…how you knew that there were so many who claimed to be the Dragon Warrior."

Po felt a chill and realized that he had inadvertently revealed too much the day they had arrived. But he decided to play dumb: "What d'ya mean?"

Sun Bear hesitated, then turned back to the panda, regarding him suspiciously. "There's something you're not telling me, young man. And I demand to know it, or so help me, I will drag you _and_ your feline friend off this mountain _myself_."

Po glared back at him and stood, firmly planting his feet and standing tall. "Hey, are you threatening me?"

"Temper, temper; I would never dream of it," the old master said with an obvious eye-roll. "I do not appreciate liars—"

"We aren't lying to you—"

"Aren't you?"

"—We're just trying to protect our families!"

"How so?"

Po finally snapped, "Because we don't trust you either, buddy!"

Sun Bear blinked in astonishment. Po was still glaring at him, and the panda let out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, fine, I didn't want to tell you…"

The old master waited for the answer he sought.

"…I'm the cook at the Jade Palace."

And he would be waiting just a little bit longer. "The…cook?"

"Master Shifu had no choice," Po shrugged. "Be glad you never ate anything Master Mantis ever cooked—Master Tigress was out for _weeks_ from food poisoning."

"Really? What did she eat?"

"Congee."

Sun Bear's jaw actually dropped in shock. "She got food poisoning from _congee_? How in the world is _that_ possible?"

Po shrugged. "Ask Mantis—I got no clue how he did it. I don't wanna know how he did it. All I know is that I saw the Jade Palace was hiring a cook, and I jumped at the chance."

"What chance?"

"To be near my heroes. I mean, wouldn't _you_ do that, if you had the chance to meet and work with—well it's not really _working_ with them, but kinda-sorta—to work with the people you look up to? I mean, the Five are so freakin' _awesome_…and really nice too. They taught me a couple moves in their spare time."

"They get spare time?" Sun Bear asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "I'm amazed Shifu allows that."

"He's a lot mellower than people think. Well, since I've met him," he shrugged. Po should have been worried at how easily he came up with the lie. Well, it wasn't _technically_ a lie—he was the unofficial cook, after all, and Mantis had in fact found a way to give Tigress food poisoning through congee; they never spoke of that incident. "My dad makes noodles, my whole family makes noodles," the panda continued. "And my dad wants me to carry on the family business…but I really, really wanna be a kung fu warrior."

"Boy, are you out of your senses?" Sun Bear bluntly asked. "You have the chance for a long, peaceful life—why in heaven's name would you stick your neck out for such a dangerous job? Are you even aware what the life expectancy is for kung fu warriors?"

"Well, Shifu's kinda old…"

"You're missing my point."

"No, you're missing _my_ point," Po said. "When the Jiao Clan came and invaded the Valley, that was a wake-up call. I don't want to be defenseless—kung fu is a way for the small and weak to protect against the hard and strong, and I want to learn it so I can protect the family I have…and the family I want to have," he finished with a bashful blush.

Sun Bear's expression had fallen from extreme suspicion to keen interest to sudden understanding. "Had you told me you were only here to learn to 'kick butt' as they say in layman's terms, I would have kicked you out in a heartbeat. I am not in the business of training soldiers—that's the army's job, not mine. If you wanted to learn to fight, you would have gone to the army…" he hesitated, crossing his arms over his thin chest. "But instead, you came here. You could have taken the easy way out and didn't. I admire that. I also admire that, unlike the others who have come here seeking training, you actually know the philosophy of kung fu; your trouble is in the practice and application."

"Yeah," Po nodded in understanding. "Master Shifu said something like that. I know I'm not real flexible, but the things are looking, that 'yoga' thing is gonna help with that!" he said hopefully, brightening up. "And I know I'm not real strong, but that'll change too, right?"

"Change only happens when you allow it to happen," Sun Bear said. "But I must restate…I don't think I have seen a single pilgrim come here with such extensive knowledge of the _art_. I've seen plenty who knew the _technique_, but very few who knew it—and saw it—as an art form."

"Well sure," Po shrugged, "Isn't that why it's called the 'martial arts'?"

The old master smirked at the quip. "I can see that you and Master Tenzin are complete opposites in this case. He knows technique and skill very well, whereas you are lacking in that department. However, his technique and skill is worthless without knowing the _reasons_ for knowing those skills. Isn't that right, Tenzin?"

Po had been paying such rapt attention to the master's lesson that he didn't notice Tai Lung had walked up behind the old bear. Sun Bear still addressed the snow leopard, though he had not even looked behind him to see who approached him. Po exchanged a similar look with Tai Lung over the master's shoulder and the snow leopard mouthed, "How does he do that?"

Po shrugged.

Sun Bear turned to look at the snow leopard. "I trust the library was to your liking?"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, Master," Tai Lung said, bowing respectfully. "It was…very informative."

"Yes, rather the point of a library, isn't it?" the master said with a smug smile. "I was just speaking to Shang about your training, which I've just realized needs to be a little more specialized to your specific circumstances. So, Tenzin, walk with me, and tell me more about yourself."

That wasn't a request. Tai Lung glanced back at Po, who gave him a sympathetic—yet warning—look, and he followed the old bear across the courtyard and down one of the hallways to the monastery's inner sanctum.

* * *

Very little to say here; not a single fight scene, and that's not going to change for a while. Sorry.

Now before anyone says anything, the yoga scene is as close to truth as possible; I drew from personal experience. It is NOT as easy as they make it look. And yes, I was in exquisite pain for a couple days after my first lesson; I had pulled muscles I didn't even know I had (and because I was out of my mind, I went back two days later and repeated the process).

For those who were paying attention, the panda-bandit Liu Yong mentioned earlier is in fact a nod to the character Bao from Nievelion's masterful epic "A Different Lesson".

Now as for predictions: Sun Bear is certainly hiding something, Tai Lung will certainly find more clues that lead him to understanding his predecessor, and Po will learn much more about kung fu than he ever expected. As for our Valley friends: expect Su Lin's backbone to get a little stronger, and you better believe this isn't the last we see of Zang.

As always, please read and review!


	9. Chapter 9: Phoenix Rising

Been really busy lately, and also feeling a little under the weather. I feel bad taking so long to update, so here's a nice long chapter for everyone to enjoy. I think 30 pages in MS Word is sufficient, no? Also, am I the only one having troubles with 's ads? It seems nearly every time I visit the site, my antivirus gives me a notification warning me about trojans and viruses. (Another explanation for why I rarely visit these days...after the nasty virus back in January, I'd much prefer keeping my computer in good working order, thank you.)

Disclaimer: I don't own it, and I don't own certain OCs; the Wu Sisters, Sun Bear, and a couple other characters are inspired by drawings from the Art of Kung Fu Panda book, so I technically don't own the _idea_ of them, but names, pasts and character personalities are all of my own invention. Any OCs not recognizable from either film or art book belong to me; please do not use them without my permission.

Also, please note my warning for language in this chapter. Sorry.

* * *

Chapter 9: Phoenix Rising

* * *

Sun Bear took him away from the main courtyard, through a rabbit's warren of halls to a large tapestry. Tai Lung stood back and appraised the work, exquisitely detailed and fringed with gold threads; the subject was a brilliantly flumed bird soaring across the sky, high above the heads of puny peasants who worshipped the glorious creature. The bird's feathers seemed so real, almost like they fluttered in the wind as it soared, and even the bird's eyes were remarkably brilliant, as if the creature were to come alive and fly right off the wall hanging. The tapestry fluttered as Sun Bear pushed it aside, extracting a key from a lanyard kept inside his robes; behind the art was a door, painted to look just like the stone wall surrounding it. The old master unlocked the door and beckoned the snow leopard to follow, allowing the heavy wooden door to click shut behind them.

Tai Lung followed Sun Bear through one of the winding passageways behind this secret entrance, clearly carved right from the mountain's face, tunnels that cut through the rock as effortlessly and uniformly as a house's hall. The walls were appropriately bare, solid naked rock smoothed from centuries of use, the floor slick and smooth from a hundred—maybe a thousand—pairs of feet having trekked down these halls before. The way was silent, but for the tapping of Sun Bear's bamboo staff against the smooth stone.

At the end of the tunnel, they had come into a smaller courtyard, and looking behind him, Tai Lung saw to his amazement that they had actually progressed up the mountain's slope to a sight that took his breath away.

Directly across from the tunnel's entrance was a tall pagoda, roofed in solid gold tiles that shone in the blinding mid-day sun. The exterior walls were painted a vivid crimson, with virtually no sign of weathering. The pagoda's entrance was blocked by two massive wooden doors, easily a foot thick by his reckoning, the hinges quite literally shining golden in the sun. Mists and clouds swirled around the spires and drifted mere yards above their heads, and the difficulty he had breathing told him that he was at a much higher elevation than he'd thought.

"Where did _this_ come from?" he asked.

"You couldn't tell?" Sun Bear asked. "We are far enough up the slope that the clouds hide this place from view. There is only one way up here, and only the most senior monks know about it. Believe me, this is such a place that the fewer people who know of it, the better."

"So why am I here?" Tai Lung asked suspiciously. "I suppose you'll tell me then kill me?"

"And defile sacred ground? Never. Besides, if I was going to kill you, I would have done it by now. I brought you up here because it is one of the very few places that we will not be overheard. I have had the privilege of divulging much from your panda friend, but now I need to know some things about you…"

"All right…" Tai Lung said warily. "Well, for starters, I've known kung fu practically my whole life. I…" he paused. "I was orphaned at an early age, and raised by a kung fu master."

"Someone I'd know?"

"Probably not—he was small-time, didn't really have many accomplishments to speak of. He was more of a hermit than anything else." Well, the last part was true; Shifu had always been a rather private person.

"There's something you're not telling me," Sun Bear said; he hesitated, then ventured, "Did this master treat you poorly?"

Tai Lung shook his head. "He…he treated me as a son, or as much as he knew how, I suppose. He was the only family I'd known, and all I wanted was to do right by him. But he…" he sighed, recalling the years he spent training. It had been arduous, and at times downright criminal the kinds of things he had been forced to do at such a tender age. Shifu, of course, believed any future Dragon Warrior had to be a prodigy, and thus cajoled and encouraged his ward to be the biggest, the strongest, the fastest warrior ever known. But now that Tai Lung had time to look back with the utmost clearest hindsight, he realized that while he had spent half of his life trying to attain the impossible…he had missed out on the one thing that any other person should have had: a childhood.

"He was demanding…nothing I ever did was good enough for him, and I started to resent him for that. I still do," he realized. "I know, now that I'm about to become a father myself, that he was strict with me because he wanted me to be a principled man, a law-abiding man, but his high expectations were almost too much to bear."

"He must have had great skill to have taught you what you know," Sun Bear said. "But my concern is that while he taught you skill, somewhere along the line he either missed the lessons on kung fu's philosophy…or he tried teaching you, but you never listened."

"Maybe that's what happened, I don't know," the snow leopard said. "I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out where I went wrong. I've done things I'm not proud of, and I'm trying to come to terms with it all. The man I am today is not the man I used to be. Just thinking of what I used to be…it's terrifying; like I'm a completely different person."

"I'd hate to have known you when you were _worse_ than you are now."

The spotted feline scowled at the bear. "I thought you said this was a _safe_ place."

"It is—but I never promised not to judge."

"You're a monk; it's not your place to judge."

"Isn't it?"

"Don't change the subject!" Tai Lung snapped. "You want to know what's wrong with me, fine! I went down a dark path, hurt a lot of people along the way, and I paid for it, just like I told you already. I used to believe in something, something bigger than myself…" he trailed off, fell silent and looked down at his empty hands, a faraway look in his eyes, "Something…to strive for, to achieve, to believe in. After a long time, I came to realize…I don't have faith anymore. I guess…I guess that's always been my problem."

"Among others, but a lack of faith is not a debilitating flaw, Tenzin. You're not the first kung fu master to 'lose it', nor will you be the last," the bear said. "You came here looking for a purpose, perhaps something you lost when you went to prison."

Tai Lung's jaw dropped. "How did you…?"

Sun Bear pointed to his eyes. "The eyes are the windows to the soul, and _your_ eyes are far more expressive than you know. There is much light that I see, but on the edges, I can see not only great pain, but the kind of hardness and soullessness that accompanies a man who has witnessed and experienced the horrors of incarceration. I don't need to know the details, but I can tell you that the darkness that forced you to do…whatever it is you did…was not your fault."

Tai Lung snorted. "Giving into it was my fault."

"Yes, but not entirely."

"How do you mean?"

"We all have darkness in our souls," Sun Bear explained. "That is the nature of yin and yang at its simplest explanation. Your soul may not be pure now, but it was at one time. I have been studying you and Shang very closely since you arrived, and have had some striking revelations that I feel obligated to share with you. Shang, as you must suspect, has a pure soul. Honor and humility are two words I associate with him, as well as compassion. You, on the other hand, are a bit more difficult to pinpoint. But the more I thought of it, the more it reminded me of a certain legend…"

"What legend?"

"That of the Phoenix Warrior."

The pounding in his ears was deafening and his heart beat so mercilessly against his chest that Tai Lung had to fight to breathe. He tried to hide his surprise, but apparently Sun Bear's comment about his eyes was all too true.

"Your problem, Tenzin, is rather easy to explain. You were as pure as Shang, once, and your problem is that you are seeking a lost innocence. But innocence once lost can never be reclaimed. The reason, I suspect, you had such a violent past—for as a warrior, I suspect you harmed quite a few people in your life, which I assume lead to your imprisonment—was because you were _so_ pure, it was too easy for darkness to creep in. That is the casualty of the pure of heart—they above all others are the ones most easily corrupted."

Tai Lung's eyes flicked over to the corridor, and down the slope, immediately thinking of Po. "Does that mean Shang will…?"

"Only with the intervention and love of a good friend can he be saved from following that path. You, I suspect, had neither the intervention, nor the friend you could trust. But there is hope for you yet, Tenzin."

"How? How is there hope?" he challenged.

"You realized you did wrong—that was the first step. You have moved on with your life after prison—the second step. And now you have something to show for it; you have a good friend in Shang, you compliment each other, and are dedicated to each other as true friends ought to be. But I can also see from your behavior the other day that you honestly, truly, and dearly love your wife. None of those things would be possible if you were still the monster you were before."

While that certainly made him feel much better about what he was doing, he still asked, "What does this have to do with the myth of the Phoenix Warrior?"

The old master spread his arms wide. "Do you see this place? Look around you… For over a thousand years, men just like you have come here seeking something that the outside world would never give them: a second chance. A way to wipe the slate clean and restart their lives as if all their sins had never happened. I will tell you now: not a single man in this temple has come here with a clear conscience and a pure soul…except Shang. Each of these monks have committed sometimes grave transgressions, and for that reason, they were not turned away. Where else would they go? Back to their old ways, back to the criminals they were before; here, they are safe, here they have the support they never received. This is the root of the Phoenix Warrior's legend.

"The story goes that the Phoenix Warrior—whoever he is or was, whenever he arrived or _will_ arrive—must go through a complete rebirth of the soul. The first step in this path is to turn one's back on the past, to forgive not just the ills done against them, but the ills they have committed. The next step, as with any journey, is to look forward, to face whatever may come, despite the dangers. Only when one can completely let go of their anger and pride, all the negative emotions they feel, then they are reborn. Of course, being physically dead then coming back to life tends to help that whole 'rebirth' thing, too. But the essence of this story is that _anyone_ can be a Phoenix Warrior, so long as they accept their mistakes, forgive the mistakes of others, and rise above the destruction and pain they have suffered. The point is to move _forward_, to rise and soar, and not to be trapped in a cage you made for yourself."

Tai Lung stared down at the courtyard's floor, paved with smoothed red sandstone tiles. As the words slowly sunk in, the confused, dim light in his eyes brightened with his countenance. "To move forward…yes, that…that makes sense."

"Do you feel better?"

The snow leopard looked up at the old bear, and realized what his true purpose was in bringing him up here in the first place; he was trying to put him at ease. But perhaps that meant he was trying to deceive him… _No,_ he told himself. If Sun Bear really meant him harm, he would have struck by now. "Yes, I do feel better." He paused. "I've a feeling this is the last time you'll actually give a d—"

Sun Bear cleared his throat.

"—give a care about my feelings."

"Good save. And you're right," the old bear said smugly. "From here on out, I will not go easy on you. True, its clear you've punished yourself enough, and been punished by someone else, but by the time I'm through with you, you'll have a whole new definition to the word."

Tai Lung regarded him very carefully now. "I'm afraid to ask what you have up your sleeve."

"The feeling is mutual," he curtly replied. "Now, if you will follow me back to the main courtyard, it is almost time for supper. But before we go, let me stress this," he grabbed the snow leopard's arm and twisted it, bringing him in close to hiss in his ear, "I will not find you here alone—if you come here alone, there is not a force in heaven or on earth that will save you."

Tai Lung snarled and tore his arm away. "Is that a threat, old man?"

"Threat?" Sun Bear asked sincerely. "No, that was a warning." He cast a wary eye around the compound, then gazed into the swirling mists that had suddenly descended on the courtyard. "Do not come here alone, _ever_," he repeated. "There are…_things_, here…that do not appreciate uninvited guests. Men have come up here alone and were never seen again—whether they fell to their deaths from this peak, or if there are spirits here guarding that pagoda—"

"What's in there that needs to be guarded?" Tai Lung asked.

Sun Bear swiftly grabbed his arm and quickly escorted him to the tunnel. "The less said about this place, the better. Do _not_ come here alone—the only ones allowed anywhere near that temple is myself, the high priests…" he paused, "…and the Phoenix Warrior himself."

* * *

Tai Lung didn't get the chance to speak with Po about his revelations until long after dinner. The other monks had eaten their rice and tea then retired to the temple for worship, leaving the two visitors alone to discuss what had happened that day. First, they related each other's visions with their ghostly visitors, then the things they had observed, and, in Tai Lung's case, impressive information he had discovered about the first Phoenix Warrior.

"You _totally_ need to show me this nook you found," Po said. "I mean, dude, you found the Phoenix Warrior's journal! That is _so cool_!"

"You're missing my point, Po," Tai Lung hissed. "I think Sun Bear knows exactly why we're here, and suspects we're not who we say we are. We need to be very careful about what we say and how we act."

"But what about what Oogway and Ming Hua said? About things being hidden in plain sight?"

"I've been thinking about that," Tai Lung said, crossing his arms, and rubbing his bare arm to fight back the chill he felt. "The journal was hidden, but it wasn't exactly in plain sight. I think it was a warning, what they said. That if we go to seek out the Phoenix Scroll, and maybe the Phoenix Warrior's tomb—if that exists—that it's going to be right under our noses."

"We don't know this place well enough to know where to start looking, though," Po said. "So what do we do?"

"I don't know—I know for one thing, I'm not going up to that pagoda alone…"

Confused, Po asked, "What's wrong with the pagoda?"

"No, there's another one…" and here the snow leopard explained what he saw, relayed all that had been said, and described the overwhelming feeling that despite Sun Bear's swearing they were alone, Tai Lung had sworn he was being watched.

Po's eyes were as wide as noodle bowls. "Whoa…you think it was mountain spirits?"

"I don't know—but I got a rather nasty chill while I was there," the snow leopard said, rubbing his bare arms self-consciously, and looking around to see if they were being spied upon.

"Has nothing to do with the fact you were at the top of a mountain," Po said evenly, "Where winds are a lot stronger than down here."

Tai Lung scowled, "You know what? Screw you."

"I love you too, Schmoopie-kins," the panda retorted. "But seriously…maybe we should go up there sometime, before winter really sets in."

"No, absolutely not," Tai Lung refused, shivering a little. "I didn't like how it felt up there. It'll be for the best if we just do as Sun Bear says, follow his training and indulge his curiosity every so often. Once we know more about this temple and how to avoid the old bear, then we can do some more exploration. Until then, I don't fancy getting lost here—there are too many tunnels and halls to lose yourself in."

"So what, we just keep our heads down for now?"

"Not entirely," he replied. "When we have down-time, I want to explore the library a little more. It couldn't hurt either of us, I think."

"Good point," Po said. "There might be some cool kung fu secrets no one else knows about. Or, y'know, something like that…" He paused, then whispered in his friend's ear, "If the Phoenix Warrior and Dragon Warrior really knew each other, maybe there's something here about the Dragon Warrior's abilities, lost techniques and stuff like that."

Tai Lung nodded. "I hadn't thought of that, but that's a good idea."

"So that's the plan," Po said, pressing the heel of his palm into the small of his back until it popped. "We train, search for clues, and try to find the Phoenix Scroll so we can prove—once and for all—who you really are!"

Tai Lung rolled his eyes and sighed. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he said with a heavy exhale, "Fine…that all sounds good."

Po fell silent, staring hard at his friend before hitting the nail on the head: "You don't think you _are_ the Phoenix Warrior, do you?"

"Panda, there's no _proof_. I _need_ proof. I can't just take something on blind faith."

"Thanks for sucking the fun outta faith, buddy."

Tai Lung glared at him.

"I'm serious, you're way too defeatist," Po said with a shrug. "And Sun Bear was right. Not having faith isn't a really big flaw…but it does make things harder."

"And faith once lost is lost for good," Tai Lung said. "My master taught me that."

"No," Po said. "He taught you that _his_ faith, once lost, is lost for good."

Tai Lung hesitated, then said, "…You know, that explains a lot."

"You're welcome."

Both visibly jumped when they heard a small yet sharp coughing just down the hall. Their interloper coughed again, then sneezed, sounding closer than before. Looking around the corner, they came face-to-face—or, rather, face-to-knee—with the little red panda novice. The child had to tilt his head all the way back to look straight up at Tai Lung, who stared back with mingled perplexity and nervousness. Just when he thought the red panda would run off to alert his superiors, the child hunched over and sneezed again.

"Aww, they sent you to bed early, huh?" Po asked him. The child looked up and nodded miserably, sniffing and wiping his nose on his forearm. Po leaned down and effortlessly picked him up. "Lets getcha to bed, okay? Whoa, he's really shivering!" the panda said with concern as the child visibly quaked in his arms.

"Here, give him to me," Tai Lung said, opening up his arms to the boy. "I've got thicker fur; he'll warm up faster."

Po obeyed and handed the red panda over; the child immediately curled up against Tai Lung's chest, shivering a little until the snow leopard wrapped his robes closer around them, and hugged the boy to his chest. "Which room is yours?"

The novice pointed down the hall; he was smiling now, happily cocooned in between thick snow leopard fur and equally thick wool robes. This contentment made it that much harder to disengage the child from Tai Lung's arms when they finally made it to the child's small cell. And Tai Lung got a trip down memory lane when he tried forcefully extracting the red panda novice from his person.

"Let go."

The child shook his head.

"Yes, right now."

He shook his head.

"Come on."

He shook his head harder.

"Let's go."

The child stuck his tongue out and gripped fistfuls of the snow leopard's fur.

Tai Lung growled lowly, "Oh come _on_, kid, while I'm young!"

Po had a hard time fighting back the laughter as he watched the snow leopard—once again—unsuccessfully attempting to remove a stubborn young child from his arm. The snow leopard pulled as hard as he dared on the cub's red robes, only to find that he was at the severe disadvantage, only because his coat was so thick and long, that it afforded the perfect place for small hands to grab hold.

"This is ridiculous!" he complained. "Chin Fu only _just_ grew out of his 'Kitty' phase, and now _this_?"

Po lost the battle on holding in the laugh. "Well, Tenzin, you _do_ kinda look like a stuffed animal."

"If the child were not here, Panda, you'd be bloody dead."

"So how many _jiao_ is that?"

"How many _jiao_ is what?"

"The B-word."

"What B-Word? Bastard?"

"Four _jiao_."

"Bitch?"

"Four _fen_."

"I'm not going to keep guessing if you're just going to keep adding to my tab, you know."

Po rolled his eyes and decided to ask the red panda. "How much does he owe for saying 'bloody'?"

Tai Lung stared, then laughed. "That's not a swear word!" He looked down when he felt the child poking his shoulder. "Yes?"

The novice held up four fingers, then pointed at Po, who smirked. "Four _fen_."

"All right, its bedtime," the snow leopard said shortly, finally yanking the cub off his arm and pushing him into his cell. Looking down at the child—who appeared to have been visibly hurt by the snow leopard's harsh rejection—Tai Lung groaned and looked at Po. "Why did I decide to become a father, again?"

"Because you love kids?" he offered.

"Or because kids love me…for some odd, ungodly reason…" Then he saw the tears forming in the novice's eyes. "Oh now, buck up—I said BUCK up, _buck_…" he said with a glare to Po, who countered with a quick "I didn't say anything."

Still sending a sideways glare at the monochromatic ursine, Tai Lung knelt in front of the novice. "Look, little monk, its not that I don't like you, I just don't like it when you grab my fur—it hurts, understand?"

The cub sniffed and nodded, still looking like he would cry.

"All right, none of that…big boys don't cry, all right? Are you a big boy?"

The cub started nodding, even as the tears brimmed in his big brown eyes.

Tai Lung groaned and slapped his hand to his forehead. "Look, you _can't_ stay with me, all right? Master Sun Bear wouldn't like tha—son of a—!" he bit back the curse just as the child dashed forward and wrapped himself around Tai Lung's arm again. Chuckling mirthlessly at his predicament, the snow leopard growled and stood, the red panda dangling from the fur on his arm. "Fine, you know what? If Sun Bear's got such a big, _stinking_ problem with it, he can take the kid off my arm himself. I'm done. Good night, everybody."

"Uh, Tai—Tenzin," Po corrected quickly. "You're just going to let the kid sleep with you?"

Tai Lung gave him a flat stare, then raised his arm to shoulder-height to showcase the small ring-tailed novice dangling there. "I don't think he's giving me many other options, is he?"

Someone's warm chuckle alerted them that they were no longer alone; the old lion from the day before had come up behind them, smiling benignly at the red panda clutching Tai Lung's arm like a lifeline. "Having trouble?"

"Kids," the snow leopard said, rolling his eyes. "For some reason, they stick to me like—"

"Like bees to honey?" the lion monk offered.

"…Alright, let's go with that."

The lion chuckled again, stepped forward and effortlessly extracted the child from the warrior's arm. "Come on, little one, you should have been in bed an hour ago." He turned to the two warriors and gave them a warning look. "I'd get to bed, too, if I were you. If Sun Bear catches both of you up this late, he may use it against you."

"How would he…?" Po began to ask.

"It's better not to think about it," the lion hushed. "He can be alarmingly creative. Hmm, that's curious," he said, pressing his palm against the red panda novice's forehead.

"What's curious?" Po asked.

"Strange…" the monk said with a faraway tone. "This little one was sent to bed early with a slight fever…I came after him to see if he made it back…" he looked at Tai Lung a moment, then shook his head with a slight smile. "Oh, it's probably nothing…must have been some sort of mistake. Anyway, have a good sleep, boys."

They took his cue and carried on down the hall to their own cells, looking back to see that the old lion was watching both of them very closely.

"Did the kid feel warm to you?" Po whispered.

"No, he was freezing cold," Tai Lung whispered back. He tapped a finger to the side of his head and remarked, "I think the thin air is more damaging than they're willing to admit."

As they crawled into their cells to sleep, Po asked in a hushed whisper, "What do you think he meant about Sun Bear being…"

"…Creative?" Tai Lung replied as he settled down on his pallet. "Gods know I don't want to find out the hard way."

* * *

The bells woke him earlier than he was expecting. But Po nonetheless sat up quickly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He ran for the door, but instead ran straight into a wall. Rubbing his smarting nose, he remembered that the cell had a low door, and that he was in a cell, not his room at the Jade Palace. He also recalled that his new alarm were bells, not a gong.

Rubbing his sore muzzle, he bent down to fold up his blanket, and found that he had two. Strange, he only remembered being given one. The tapping on his wall alerted him to get moving, and quickly. He dropped the blankets and hurried out, letting Tai Lung help him stand and rush to fall in line behind the monks. The same old lion from the night before instructed them to follow him; he led them down a different set of corridors, to an outside training ground.

Sun Bear was already there, balancing on one foot atop one of many tall posts, his palms pressed together in meditation. When he heard them coming, he opened his eyes and nodded to the lion. "Thank you, First Brother. You are dismissed. Gentlemen," he greeted the panda and snow leopard. "I trust you're rested."

"In a manner of speaking," Tai Lung griped, rubbing his sore neck and shoulders. The old master ignored him.

"Good. Today we work on balance." The bear pointed to the posts. "Get up on one, each. Your exercise today is to balance yourself on one post at a time. The goal is to stand on each post at least once."

Po and Tai Lung exchanged a glance and a sly smile. Simple, child's play! Shifu had trained them with this exact same exercise. This would be easy. But as soon as they hoisted themselves up on the posts, they wobbled. The posts were not completely anchored in the ground. Well, maybe this would be a little more difficult than they thought…

Sun Bear nodded and resumed his meditation, balancing on one leg and bringing his other foot up to press against his thigh. "Follow my lead…" he said, waiting for the pair to mirror him. "And begin."

Almost at once, Po fell, landing with a heavy thump. Sun Bear rolled his eyes and sighed through his nose. "Try again, Master Shang."

Po scrambled back up, red-faced and sore. Tai Lung was looking at him sympathetically, but he too found it hard to balance atop the unsteady perch. Po fell at least a dozen more times before noon, each time getting right back up on the post without Sun Bear ordering him to.

The sun beat down on them as the day progressed. Po felt dizzy and weak from dehydration, and even Tai Lung wasn't looking well. The snow leopard had his eyes shut tight and jaw clenched, focusing too much on not falling and keeping perfectly still. Sun Bear had started watching him intently, a thoughtful look on his face.

"Alright, get down, both of you. Take five."

They immediately obeyed, rubbing their legs and other sore spots while gulping down draught after draught of water from a provided pitcher. But Sun Bear wasn't done with them.

"Five minutes are up. Get back up onto the posts. This time, the other leg."

Po and Tai Lung bit back on tired sighs and resumed their posts, this time balancing on the opposite leg. Tai Lung pressed his foot against his thigh, as Sun Bear was doing, but Po found it more difficult just putting his foot against his knee. He trembled, and looked ready to fall.

Tai Lung had had enough, breaking out of his pose to grab the panda's extended knee and pull him upright. "Not on the knee!" he snapped. "You'll throw your balance off, _and_ throw your knee out!"

"I can't get my leg any higher!" Po snapped back.

"Then put your foot on your _calf_, you silly bastard!"

"Four _jiao_," Sun Bear tallied. "And he has a point, Master Shang. If your balance is compromised the higher your leg goes, then lowering it is wise."

"But…"

"Or you can do it your way," the old master dismissively said. "Either way, it is your choice: to take the easy route, or the hard one."

Po thought about the advice, and made his decision. He took hold of his ankle and raised his foot above the knee, ignoring Tai Lung's frustrated groan. The panda immediately lost his footing and fell again, landing hard on his side. This time, it hurt like hell. It hurt to breathe. Though he couldn't see it, Sun Bear's expression turned grave, the master ordering the snow leopard to stay his ground.

"Let's see what path he takes," the master said.

Po immediately knew what had happened. Too many training exercises with Tigress had taught him the pain of broken ribs. He tried catching his breath, struggling to sit up, pushing hard on his arms to stand, but each bone and every muscle screamed in livid protest. He lifted his eyes to the post that Tai Lung was balancing on, the snow leopard finally finding his footing. Now the panda realized what the real problem was.

It was pride.

Every time he fell, his pride hurt worse and worse, every fall another bruise on his body and his ego. The only thing keeping him from giving up was sheer tenacity and his own desire to prove he was as good as, if not better than, Tai Lung. He was the Dragon Warrior, wasn't he? Shouldn't he be the better warrior? Besides that, he didn't want to make a fool of himself in front of Master Sun Bear; true, falling as many times as he had would have already proven his ineptitude, but he would have felt worse if he didn't at least _try_. He figured Sun Bear was already disappointed in his performance, but no more so than Po was at himself. And if he gave up now, Po would never be able to forgive himself.

He took in a deep breath, using the breathing exercises he learned a few days before, and finally picked himself up, pressing a hand against his side and gasping for air.

"Shang?"

Po looked up at Tai Lung's anxious expression, the look asking if he wanted any help. The panda narrowed his eyes and straightened his spine. Then he started to climb the post again. He struggled at first, the pain in his side spreading to his chest, but he finally made it up, balanced on one leg, and pressed his palms together as he clenched his teeth against the pain.

"Both of you, _down_!" the old master barked. "You have both failed today's test!"

The students stared at him in astonishment, chorusing, "Test?"

"Yes," he said, finally hopping off his post. He looked absolutely incensed. "And you have failed miserably. You are too focused on the physical, not the rational. Did you learn _nothing_ the other day? You fools don't know your limitations, and you don't know when to quit. And in battle, that will get you killed. Get down off your posts. We're done."

"Don't know when to…" Tai Lung trailed off, then he growled, jumping off his post, somersaulting in midair, and landed directly in Sun Bear's path. He glared and accused, "Don't know when to quit? You wouldn't _let_ us quit!"

"What makes you say that, Tenzin?" he coolly asked.

"You're our master!" the snow leopard said. "We are to obey you without question. We're not supposed to jump until you say so; we can't do anything without your permiss—"

"When did I ever say I was your master?"

Tai Lung's jaw dropped. So did Po's. And both warriors realized with despair that the old bear was absolutely right. He was a master, but he wasn't _their_ master. And that meant they weren't completely obligated to obey him.

"Your problem, both of you," the bear continued, "Is exactly as I said when you arrived four days ago. You let others' opinions matter too much to you. _That_ is what is holding you back. You," he pointed at the snow leopard, "refused yourself water to the point of collapse. And _you_," he turned to give the panda a look, "were too concerned with my and your comrade's opinion of you that you kept pushing yourself to the point of serious injury. And _then_ you have the gall to keep going, to keep fighting with broken ribs? If you ever did that in battle—if either of you _ever_ ignored your limitations or injuries—you would get yourselves killed. End of story."

Grabbing his bamboo staff and brushing past Tai Lung, the bear narrowed his eyes at the feline. "I knew you had a lot of pride, but I never expected you wouldn't be the only one," he said, sending Po a significant look before marching off.

Both warriors watched him go, the pair completely stunned. The minute Po lost his focus, he toppled again and fell. Fortunately, Tai Lung was there to break his fall…albeit unintentionally.

"Po," the snow leopard gasped from beneath the heavy bear. "I don't mean to be rude, but _get off_."

Po wheezed and rolled off his friend, who gasped for air, holding his side and feeling for cracked ribs of his own. The panda leaned his broad back against a pole and sucked down air as Tai Lung checked his wounded side. The feline let out a long, low whistle. "You really banged yourself up."

"How bad is it?" Po breathlessly asked with a grimace.

"There's some bruising," his friend sighed, touching his side. Pressing his fingers into the bruises, he felt around the panda's ribcage, and knitted his brows in confusion. "That senile old bear is _full_ of it."

"What?" Po gasped.

"He was wrong about the broken ribs. If you _had_ broken them, I'd be able to feel the fractures, and they're simply not there. Furthermore, you wouldn't be able to breathe right now. You _are_ breathing, right?"

Po nodded, taking deep breaths and slowly finding, to his astonishment, that the pain was slowly fading away. "So, I'm not really hurt?"

"Not seriously. But as much as I hate to admit it, he had a point," he said, sitting back on his haunches. "Injuring yourself and continuing to fight? That's never smart."

"That's what _you_ always do," the panda pointed out.

Tai Lung hissed in his ear, "I had _Shifu_ for a teacher. Think about it."

"Point taken." Po shifted a little to find a more comfortable position, but nothing was helping to abate the pain in his side and chest.

"As tough as his idea of 'training' is," Tai Lung said. "I suppose Sun Bear isn't as bad as Shifu was…at least to me."

"I dunno about that," Po said, looking in the direction Sun Bear had taken. "I'm startin' to think this guy makes Shifu look like the Dalai Lama."

The cat said nothing to that, and helped the panda to stand, letting him lean heavily on him. "Come on, mate, let's get you bandaged up…" He looked up and spied the red panda novice watching them with intense curiosity. The child was apparently waiting for his own lesson on the posts, if the other novices in line behind him were a clue. Tai Lung looked back at his friend, then back at the children. "Can either of you get some bandages for him? He's hurt."

The red panda child nodded and scampered off. A few minutes later, he came back, little arms laden with bandages and some packets of dried herbs. The novices waited and watched as Tai Lung applied the bandages tightly around the panda; their teacher, an ox, told them that this "served as a learning experience", which humiliated the giant panda even further.

When he was done, the snow leopard accepted the herbs from the helpful child. "I suppose I just give these herbs to him, then?"

The red panda cub shook his head, pantomiming pouring something into a cup.

"Ah, I make tea?"

The child nodded.

"So what do we call you?"

The novice looked to his oxen teacher—Third Brother—who nodded. The boy knelt and drew the characters in the dirt: Little Brother.

"How about we call you Shorty?"

The red panda scowled stuck out his tongue at him, earning a chuckle, "Little Brother it is, then." Turning to Po, the snow leopard helped him stand. "Come on, panda, let's get you to the infirmary."

"We don't have an infirmary," Third Brother replied.

"So where do your sick and injured go?" Po asked.

"They go to their cells," the ox monk stated. "Cracked ribs require a lot of rest…" He added gloomily, "But I doubt you'll get it, if Master Sun Bear has anything to say about it."

* * *

Far to the northwest of the Phoenix Temple, another similar trainee wasn't getting much of a break, either. Lang had suffered a lot in his young life, from hunger, cold, and abuse in all forms, to fearing for his life on more occasions than he cared to count. Even with Asmodei Koshchei at his side, he felt no safer now than he had when he was still White Wolf's slave.

It didn't help that Zi Hao had gotten even crueler towards him. The black wolf had hit Lang once—in front of Koshchei—and Koshchei had nearly ripped his arm from its socket. So the prideful wolf had resorted to much more insidious means of torment. The usual insults were there: "omega", "dog", "puppy", and "half-bred mutt" were all there, but now the verbal torment had escalated to threats. "Good night, Lang," he said one night. "Sleep well. You'll probably be dead in the morning."

But Koshchei had overheard him that time. From that day forward, the leopard made sure that Lang stayed close to him at all times.

"His time vill come, as it does alvays," the leopard assassin told the young wolf in confidence as they sat by the moderately-sized campfire one night. The Half Dozen slept with their backs to the flames, curled up under their cloaks with their packs as pillows. Koshchei took his pipe out of the pocket in his tunic and reached for his pouch of tobacco. "Bully is only bully until bigger bully come around," he said.

"But I'm not a bully," Lang protested, glumly poking hot coals and cooling ashes with a stick. "And I'll never be bigger than him. I don't know what you see in me—I'll never be anything special."

"Ah, but you are, Lang, you _are_," the leopard consoled. "I haff gift, you see…I see things in people no one else see. You haff much strength in you, I see that. You think veak person let comments like that go? Veak person vould kill theyself by naow. _Nyet_, you are strong, _malchik_, much strong. Vords can hurt more than fists, this I know hand of first—"

"Firsthand," the wolf corrected.

"Whateva. Point old Koshchei try to make: all people haff strength. You haff strength…terrifying strength. I no vant to be the _mudak_ ova there vhen you show your strength first time," the leopard said, pointing to Zi Hao's prone form.

Lang sighed, "If I ever do…"

"_Nyet_, listen, listen," the leopard whispered. "Firsthand I know," he said, using his new vocabulary word. "Is only so many time you kick dog before dog bite back. Dog vill not bark first—bite first, alvays."

"But that's the problem," Lang said. "Being called a dog is the worst insult in wolf society. It means you're pretty much…um…"

"You are 'someone's bitch', is saying, yes?"

Lang's ears pressed against his skull. "Yeah, exactly. A dog always has a master, and blindly follows him, even if that master doesn't care about him. Wolves pride themselves on independence. Yeah, we have pack leaders, but we roam free."

"So explain haow 'half-breed' is bad," the assassin said as he stuffed some tobacco into his pipe.

Lang gave him an aghast look. "How could you _not_ know why that's bad?"

"Ach, I see all of time," Koshchei explained, taking a stray branch and sticking it into the fire to light it. He put the twig to the pipe's bowl and ignited the leaves before inhaling and puffing out a few clouds of blue-gray smoke. "Is many half-breed volf-dogs up north. You know funny thing? They are much stronger than pure-blood. You know last Han-King? Last, eh, vhat is vord…Emperor? He vas veak. Vhy? Too many generations marry first cousin; inbreeding, is called, inbreeding to keep 'royal blood royal'…and it is very bad. He vas so veak and sick, he vas easy to kill. I think I tell you, once, I no like 'easy'."

Lang started and looked at him, wide-eyed, and breathlessly asked, "You…you killed the emperor? The current emperor's father! _You_ killed him?"

"Vas no loss," the leopard shrugged. "I also kill—"

"I know, I heard the stories," Lang interrupted. Everyone had heard those stories, and many were aghast that the last emperor's assassin had never been caught. It wasn't just the old ruler's death, but the deaths of all his royal sons—all possible heirs to his throne—that were found brutally murdered as well. Every single one of those sons had been born of the emperor and a princess in his harem. At the time, most thought that the assassin had a personal vendetta against the old ruler…but now that Lang thought about it, it seemed pretty clear that Koshchei's idea of "personal" was strikingly different from the average person's. "I thought it was political…"

"Vell, _da et nyet_…yes and no," he translated. "Political because I hate last king's policies. Personal because…eh, I like current emperor better. Know vhy?"

"I have I feeling I do…"

Koshchei smiled, but there was a slight cruelty there. "I murder all boys of royal birth. Current Emperor vas son of lesser concubine, concubine haff no royal blood at all. Current Emperor known for strength, yes? Trust me—hybrids and 'half-breeds' much stronger and less sickly-types than pure breeds."

Lang squirmed and inched away from the leopard, yet only slightly out of his reach. "If I can be honest…I think you're nuts. Certifiably fucking insane."

Koshchei grinned. "Vhat I tell you? You much smart. But point," he said, puffing at the pipe, "is Zi Hao is wrong about you, Lang. Vait for it, not long naow…he vill kick you for last time, and you vill make him see this."

Sure enough, Lang got his opportunity the very next day. He thought about what Koshchei had told him: that the leopard had also been the runt of the litter, and how, despite this, he had become the single most feared assassin in Asia. He thought of…how had he worded it?

_A dog can only be kicked so many times before it bites back._

And truth be told, Lang was getting really tired of it. He had also slept poorly the night before, so he was a bit more irritated than usual. They were passing very close to the Gansu-Shaanxi border when Zi Hao decided to unleash his usual torrent of abuses. Lang fought to control his breathing and clenched his teeth and fists. He was long past wanting to cry for every little taunt. Now, he was just…angry. Why did Hao hate him so damn much? Why did he single _him_ out? What did Lang ever do to him?

Lang suddenly stopped short, resulting in Hao accidentally bumping into him. The black wolf smirked and laughed, "Aww…is the little puppy going to whine and cry? C'mon, dog, let's see how cute you look with those little puppy—"

"Hao, shut the fuck up."

The entire party ground to a halt. Koshchei only paused in his step, his ears flicking back to listen to what would happen next. The black wolf stopped short, his spade-like ears twitching, then he growled low in his throat and demanded, "What did you say to me?"

Lang turned and glared up at Hao. "I said, 'Shut the fuck up'. I'm sick of you running your mouth. You talk a lot of shit, and I'm not going to tolerate it anymore."

Zi Hao only laughed in his face and pushed the smaller wolf back. Lang stumbled back a couple steps, but caught himself just as the black wolf grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. "Well look who suddenly grew a backbone," he sneered. "What're you going to do now, twerp? You going to fight me?"

"No," Lang said with a smile. "I'm bigger than that. I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity that I don't need to prove it by beating you up. Maybe _that's_ why you like fighting so much…who are you trying to convince, Hao?"

"Why you little piece of—"

Two things happened at once. Zi Hao made a move to punch Lang right on the snout…but Lang, smaller and less bulky than the black wolf, proved faster, and grabbed hold of the thick fold of fat on the bigger wolf's scruff and yanked down hard. His balance compromised by his lunging forward into the punch, Hao fell to his knees, and Lang made his second move. The small wolf grabbed a fistful of the black wolf's fur and yanked his head back, twisting the fur hard enough to make the bigger wolf wince.

"I am going to say this once," Lang growled, "And only once. You fuck with me again, and I'll smash in your dog-face. Got it?"

"You fucking spineless little—"

Zi Hao did not get the opportunity to finish. Lang took advantage of a nearby pine tree, and, gripping harder at the fur on the back of Hao's head, slammed the other wolf's face right into the tree's trunk. The other wolves winced for Zi Hao as pine needles fell from the highest branches as the wolf's head made contact. Lang, snarling like one of his savage ancestors, gripped the other wolf's fur tightly and slammed his head into the tree three more times.

Koshchei watched the affair with passive calm, arms crossed over his chest as he gave a critical eye to Lang's assault. The other wolves—even the wrathful Bao Nu—recoiled in shock and downright disgust to hear the squishing of flesh and cracking bones slamming against a hard surface, and all squirmed to see blood and teeth flying from the black wolf's face.

Lang finally threw Hao aside like a dirty rag and left the bully lying there on the ground. Hao's face was caked with blood and pine sap, the fur and skin cut up from the rough pine bark. His snout was clearly broken, judging by the sudden crooked look it had taken, and the outpouring of blood from his shorn-up nostrils. He was by no means a weakling, and had taken beatings before, but this time, Hao lay prone on the pine-needle-covered forest floor, coughing to expel the blood seeping into his mouth; he rolled to his side, holding his head and struggling to breathe.

"How's it feel, Hao?" Lang asked, his tone quiet, yet cold. "How much do you like it?" Then Lang turned his attention to the other wolves, and barked, "Anyone else?"

None of them dared to look at each other; they all shook their heads. Lang snorted, closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then turned on his heel and continued down the path. As he passed Koshchei, the young wolf remarked, "Ready when you are."

Koshchei only smiled proudly, and turned to follow the youth. "Me? I am alvays ready."

* * *

"I'll beat his sorry little carcass into the ground, the little half-bred bastard!"

"You should really stop talking right now," Yu Wang said as he patched up the black wolf. "You'll tear open the wounds at this rate."

"Let him—you know the saying," Lan Duo said. "You can only kick a dog so many times before it bites back…and Lang just bit back." The apathetic wolf stared back as the black wolf glared at him. "Don't give me that look; you know you had it coming."

"Like _you_ never bullied the kid," Bao Nu snorted, tearing into his meal as they sat around their own campfire. Lang and Koshchei were a few yards away, sharing a modest fire and an equally modest meal. Bao Nu, the biggest of the Half Dozen, spit into the flames and looked back at Duo. "You intimidated him, too."

"Not as much as you jokers did," Duo said. "I only told him to stay the hell out of my way, and he did. He's not _that_ smart, but he's smart enough to stay away from me. The rest of you went out of your way to make his life hell. How do you know you're not next?"

Bao Nu laughed, "Yeah, right! That little skinny-armed twerp up against _me_?" To demonstrate his point, he flexed his arm muscles, pointing to the rather intimidating biceps. "I'd pummel him into his own grave! Face it, Duo, you just don't bother—"

"I don't _bother_ because I like having my head where it is." Duo glanced around the fire at the other wolves and started to sharpen his weapon with a whetting stone. "I didn't last this long going out looking for trouble. Spend all your energy picking fights, you don't have the energy when the fight picks _you_. Self-preservation, that's my motto."

Tan Lan glanced over his shoulder at Koshchei. "So what now? The kid's growing a backbone, and the old man's got some plan up his sleeve…and I don't like it. We've been with him for a week, and still no pay."

"That all you care about, money?" Xiu Jiu asked as he ravaged his meal. "There's more important stuff."

"Like what, stuffing your face every chance you get?" the tan wolf sneered.

"Enough!" Zi Hao snapped. Shaking off the taller and thinner Yu Wang, the black wolf crouched closer to the fire, rubbing his arms to warm himself against the chill in the autumn air. "The omega will not get away with this; I won't tolerate it."

"Too bad," Duo said, "You don't have a say anymore." Testing his _pudao_'s edge with his thumb, the grey wolf said, "Until recently, you were our unofficial Alpha. Our unofficial Omega just kicked your sorry tail and you got the scars to prove it. By lupine traditions—"

Zi Hao's face visibly paled and he snapped, "Don't you dare—"

Duo ignored him. "—That means Lang is our new Alpha."

Silence fell heavily across the sextet, each wolf looking to his comrades for comment. Not a single one of them said anything. Tradition was tradition, and any who backed out or circumvented traditions as holy as those held by the wolves were as good as banished…or dead. And Zi Hao knew the gravity of what had happened.

"Easy, wolf," Duo said. "There are ways to make this better."

"You'd better have a good idea," Hao glared.

"Aren't you a little low on the pecking order now to be mouthing off like that?" Tan Lan reminded him. "Duo's right; far as I'm concerned—as far was we are concerned—you're an omega now."

The other wolves nodded in agreement.

Zi Hao stared in amazement at the group. "So now what?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Duo asked, standing and pocketing his whetting stone. "Time to kiss some ass." Dumbfounded, they watched as the grey bandit closed the distance between the two fires and boldly stood opposite the leopard and former omega wolf. "There room here?"

Lang and Koshchei shared a look. Koshchei sent another look back at Duo, then shrugged at Lang as if to say "it's your decision". Lang warily looked at Duo, then gave a little shrug of his own. "Sure, have a seat."

Lan Duo sat next to Koshchei, daringly close, and the leopard noticed it too. The wolf warmed his hands by the fire, not looking in the other assassin's direction. Not wasting any time at all, the wolf got straight to the point: "I want to teach Lang how to fight with pole arms."

"Vhat?" asked Koshchei, who was genuinely caught off-guard.

"_What_?" asked Lang, who was just as surprised as the leopard.

Duo glanced between the younger wolf and the older leopard and repeated, "I want to teach him pole-arm fighting techniques. I'm asking your permission. You promised us pay if we work for you, that makes you our boss, so I'm asking my boss's permission to train the newbie."

"Vhy you teach him?" the leopard asked, not bothering to hide his suspicion.

"Because in the off chance the kid has to fight the Dragon Warrior, Tai Lung, or one of the Furious Five, he'll want to be as far away from them as physically possible. And let's face it," he said with a sardonic smile, "he's not much for hand-to-hand combat, especially if paired against someone like Master Tigress."

Koshchei quickly appraised Lang's slight build, then nodded, almost apologetically to Lang, before answering, "This I vill grant you as true."

"So I can train him?"

The leopard sat very still for a very demoralizing moment. Duo swore the leopard would say no…but much to his surprise, the assassin seemed rather warm to the idea, and indeed, looked to be considering his other options. Lang, meanwhile, appeared to be in as deep thought as his new mentor. Duo had to hide his satisfaction. He snapped back to attention when Koshchei cleared his throat.

"You haff my permission, volf. You tread carefully, or next step vill be last."

"I wouldn't have it any other way. Kid," Duo said to Lang, "We start your training first thing tomorrow. Don't think I'll go easy on you. I'm not your mama, and I'm not gonna hold your hand—"

Lang glared at him. "I don't expect you to, and I don't want you to."

"Good, glad we're on the same page."

"So you're just teaching me out of the goodness of your own heart?" Lang asked suspiciously. "Just like that? I thought it would be, 'like, work and effort'."

"I have my reasons," Duo said, not tearing his gaze away from the youth's. "I'm not doing this for free. Consider this a favor you need to pay back later."

"Then forget it," Lang snapped. "I'm through with being indebted to someone—"

Duo chuckled, "Shit, kid, I'm not asking for your firstborn child, here. Biggest favor I'm ever going to ask is you killing a kung fu master—can be any one of 'em."

"Is tall order, as they say," Koshchei mused, clenching his teeth around his pipe's mouthpiece. "Take many a year for him to learn enough to take on Furious Five."

"Didn't say he needed to take on the Five; _any_ kung fu master would do. I count that as the 'final exam'. I think you can appreciate that," he said with a nod to the leopard. "Way I hear it, you had a similar system."

"This is true." The Amur leopard exhaled a long, low puff of smoke and stared hard at the lupine assassin. "Nothink is to happen to Lang. Anything happen to him, I vill kill you, skin you, and hang your carcass for vultures. If you are _very_ lucky…I vill do in that order."

Despite his otherwise cool composure, even Duo swallowed hard at this proposal…because he knew that it wasn't a threat, it was a promise. "Gotcha."

What he didn't tell them—and in fact, what he neglected to tell his fellow wolves—was that he had a very good reason for training Lang in his favored fighting techniques. True, he didn't want to have to babysit the kid once battle came, for it would, inevitably. But he had other reasons. Political reasons, one could say. Seeing Lang beat the tar out of the lupine tyrant had immediately set the gears turning in Duo's head, and a plan had emerged like a lotus from the muck of a riverbed.

Duo had been of the mind for self-preservation since infancy. That was just the way it was, kill or be killed. Cutthroat, maybe, but he'd survived his three decades of life by being smarter than the average criminal, and that meant never getting caught. Like Tan Lan and Yu Wang, and unlike Zi Hao, Bao Nu, and _especially_ Xu Jiu, Duo knew how to keep his head down, and, as he'd told Lang, how to keep his mouth shut. Sometimes inaction was just as important as action, and the less said, the less trouble.

And frankly, as much as he hated to admit it (and he _really_ hated to admit it)…he just felt _sorry_ for the kid. Duo had an inkling of what that was like; he too was smaller than the average wolf, but what he lacked in brute force, he made up for with speed and dexterity…which was exactly what he saw in Lang's attack on Hao. The kid may not have had much in the way of strength or finesse, but damn it, the kid was fast. Duo didn't even know what had happened until it was practically over, and that was actually pretty impressive. Now he chided himself for not seeing the younger wolf's potential, for it was there, and all Lang needed as a little confidence.

He also wanted to see what else Lang was capable of. They had all severely misjudged him. The small wolf was an easy target and an even easier victim, and it seemed accepted fact that he would either do something to get himself killed, or just do it himself to escape the pain; the sad thing was not a single one of them would have missed him.

But now Duo was watching Lang very carefully, and his well-trained eye picked up many surprising things. Things he should have picked up as soon as he met the twerp. He was slight, but he was fast. Not too smart, but smart enough, and had potential to learn much more. A little scrawny, but what boy his age wasn't? More importantly, there was something in the young wolf's eyes, something Duo couldn't quite place. There was pain and sadness there, of course, and Duo also recognized the spark of indignation that had finally ignited into a flame that had viciously burned his abuser. But there was _something_…a _light_ there…that Duo would have known if he'd had the privilege of a more positive upbringing: Innocence. Honest-to-gods _innocence_. It was no wonder Lang was mistaken for someone much younger than he actually was; that wide-eyed purity constantly on his visage made him _look_ like a puppy for hell's sake.

And for some odd reason, Duo felt guilty for planning to take that from him.

Lang, however, was looking at Lan Duo—and the other wolves—more carefully than he had before, when they had been his masters and tormentors. His eyes were not as well-trained as the assassin that sat across from him, but he could tell from the oppressive stillness in the air around them that something had…shifted. Something was…_different_ about the way they looked at him. He was more surprised that they were actually _looking_ at him now; before, they just ignored him. But he caught the glances they sent over their shoulders, and knew whenever they whispered that it was about him. The glares on his back he knew by instinct came from Zi Hao…but like the other wolves, Lang had no idea why the black wolf hated him so much.

The other wolves now watched him much more carefully that before. Yu Wang—normally unflappable—cautiously kept his distance now, while Xu Jiu and Tan Lan seemed genuinely interested in what had changed. Lang knew what had changed: he was sick of being bullied. No one else was going to stick up for him but himself, and honestly, he hated himself for being so blind to that revelation for so long.

He waited until Duo had faked a yawn and excused himself to sleep. Lang noticed Koshchei was watching the retreating wolf with as much interest as he was himself. The Amur leopard exhaled his pipe smoke and whispered to Lang without turning his head, "Vhat are you thinking?"

Lang chanced a glance back at the other wolves, half of whom had already settled down for the night. But his gaze lingered on Duo's back. "I'm thinking I don't trust him."

"Good." Koshchei turned over his pipe and dumped the burnt tobacco leaves into the fire, tapping the bowl on a rock to expel the last of it. "I may not fear them, myself, but they are not men to cross, yes? You haff much potential, Lang," he said, clapping a heavy paw onto the boy's thin shoulder, "But potential not yet reached. Vait until time is ready, then strike."

"How do I know if it'll be the right time?"

Koshchei fell silent, visibly looking for the right way to word his response. When he came to it, he lowered his voice again, and explained, "Is much different the vay volfs hunt and cats hunt. Volfs find sickly prey and chase until prey is veak and tired. Cats—like me—carefully choose first target, first by vatching, then vaiting, then striking vhen prey least expect. No matter vhat target, they vill alvays let their guard down…_alvays_. You know vay volfs hunt…so old Koshchei suggest, you hunt like cat."

Lang nodded, and immediately started thinking about this advice. It made sense. He was never the fastest, nor the strongest, but he had taken Zi Hao by surprise; so in a way, he had acted like a cat. "So I wait until Duo's taught me what he knows?"

"Use your veakness as strength."

"What does that mean?"

Koshchei smirked at him, then sent him a conspiring wink. "You know as vell I do."

* * *

THWACK.

"Keep your arms up—UP!"

THWACK.

"Good. Now don't lock your arms—a hard enough hit and you'll break your elbows. Keep the joints loose."

Lang blocked the downward blow with the length of his staff, feeling his arms trembling when Duo's staff slammed down onto his.

THWACK.

"Good." The grey wolf assassin nodded once, then slowly backed up, "Much better."

Lang dropped his staff and shook his arms. "Is there any way to keep my arms from hurting?"

"Yeah," Duo said. "Do a few push-ups. Build some muscle there. Let's try this again. Pick up your staff. Now I'm going to come at you from a three-sixty heel-step turn overhead twirl on a five-degree angle crossing over into a forty-five degree frontal downward strike—"

"Okay, what the hell does that mean?"

"I'm going to do a pirouette like a pretty-pretty-princess and whack you upside the head."

"Oh. Well why didn't you just say that?"

Koshchei buried his face in one of his paws. This was _not_ going as well as he'd hoped. Lang still showed promise, and plenty of it, but he was not as skilled as some of the men the leopard had trained himself. He hadn't had such trouble training "newbies" (his new Mandarin vocabulary word) in Jiao Shen's army. Lang was proving—almost painfully—that he was definitely a farm boy. Even Bao Nu, who was standing next to the leopard (well, as close as he dared to), had to agree.

Bao Nu was the largest and most physically imposing of the sextet, the muscle of the group. His body was covered in thick muscles, stretched and toned to an almost alarming peak. This served his purpose as a bandit; most of his victims didn't even bother putting up a fight when they saw him, and it bored him far too easily. He was like the leopard in that he preferred a challenge; challenge in any form was both intriguing and intoxicating, which was why he had stayed behind to watch Lang's "training"—if it could be called that—while the others scouted on ahead.

Bao Nu winced when one of Duo's strikes landed hard on Lang's body. "Oof, this is just painful to watch…"

"Please do not be reminding me," Koshchei muttered. The leopard sighed and watched more, shaking his head. "I vas hoping he vould haff more experience, vit vay he go after black volf back there."

"You and me both," Bao Nu admitted. "Kid had some hard-core strength…and I gotta admit, he had some pretty big _cojones_ to go to the inn looking for you."

"Vhat is this vord, '_cojones'_?"

"He's gotta big pair of…well, y'know."

"Ah."

"Yeah, exactly." They watched more of Lang's training—again, if it could have been called that—in silence, until the massive wolf said, "I've done my fair share of killing, but I started as a highwayman, and mostly sleight of hand tricks to steal when I didn't have other choices."

"You pick up tricks vhen little pup, yes?" Koshchei asked. "Most bandits I know start as pickpockets."

"Yeah…" Bao Nu said. "Yeah, that's how I started." He paused, then furrowed his brows, and hesitated a moment before postulating, "Y'know, now that I think about it…maybe that's what he'd be perfect for."

"I vant him in business of killing, not stealing," the Amur leopard reminded him. "Stealing von't do much good in my plans."

"I disagree," Nu said with a straight face; he hardly ever smiled, unlike Tan Lan and Yu Wang. Whenever they smiled, it never led to anything good. And Bao Nu may not have been the smartest of the Half Dozen—that honor went to Lan Duo—Nu more than made up for this disability by living up to his wrathful name with a swifter temper than even Zi Hao's. "See, what Lang lacks may be to his strength…he's got this doe-eyed innocence thing going on, right?"

Koshchei's blue-green eyes brightened, and he grinned, "_Da_, I see vhat you are saying. He looks innocent, and people vill take him at his vord."

"Exactly, no one would ever see it coming."

"You vould teach him, then? Is that vhat you are offering?"

Bao Nu shrugged, "I could, and maybe I am. Just…under one condition," he lowered his voice and whispered into the leopard's ear, "I don't want the others knowing about it. I'm on shaky enough ground with Hao; I don't want him pissed at me."

"I thought it vas decided he is omega naow?"

"It was…but he's too stubborn to admit defeat, yet."

"Is good point. Very vell—your condition is good one. I vill extend offer to _malchik_ for you; is good, yes?"

"I'd appreciate it. Thanks." He winced again and sighed when he heard Lang's anguished cry. "Ugh, I can't watch this anymore. Let me know if he actually lives…"

Koshchei stayed silence, but it was unclear if he was aware of Nu's retreat, or just ignoring him. The leopard had started glaring at Lan Duo, recalling their agreement. It seemed…odd to the Amur leopard. Jiao Shen had had wolves in his army, and Koshchei was used to working with them. But these wolves he had "acquired" recently behaved quite differently than the ones he was used to working with. Under Jiao's control, they never schemed or plotted, which, instinct told him, was exactly what these beasts were doing now.

Like Lang, Koshchei initially had extreme suspicion about Lan Duo's motives, and now that Bao Nu had extended an offer, the spotted feline's misgivings were cemented like a gouged message on a tomb wall. These wolves were planning a coup. If they thought they could teach Lang to fight, while the young wolf had gained the leopard's trust, and thus use that trust to betray him, then Koshchei considered them very sloppy schemers. This had happened once before, and at the time, Koshchei had only gotten out by…damn, what was the term? _Skin of the teeth, yes_…_what a strange saying_, he mused. Either way, he had only barely survived that attempt on his life, and learned to never trust anyone.

Under Jiao, the best way to stay alive was to do as you were told and not stick your neck out for anyone. Wolves, in his experience, rarely helped each other except on the hunt. True, Koshchei wanted Lang to have a rudimentary knowledge of self-defense, but he had expected to train him himself. Not that he would look…look… _Look a gift horse in the mouth, yes, that's the term…these people have very strange sayings…_ Duo's offer was a sound one, and actually worked in Koshchei's favor, now that he thought about it.

A cold smile slowly grew on his lips. Perfect. Yes, let the wolves all teach Lang something. He would learn to fight. Koshchei, in turn, would learn all their weaknesses, the fools. Things were about to get very interesting.

* * *

It was a boom town, built right up onto the walls of the Guizhou canal, and the ideal place for one to make a fortune, or to lose it. People of all backgrounds and origins flocked to places like these, cities and towns built up along the banks of the longest-running canal in the empire, but more often than not it was those of less esteem that came to places like these. Certainly each city had its ritzy areas catering to those born with silver spoons in their mouths, but each city also had areas that turned those silver spoons into silver daggers.

It was in one of these neighborhoods that found a bull out on the town, weaving his way through narrow alleys and squeezing between buildings and throngs of people. Though the air had turned from a heady warmth to a brisk chill in under a week, the mass of bodies kept the quickly-approaching winter chill away from the streets. Passing through one alley and into the main boulevard, the bull walked straight into a din and clamor of bells, drums and whistles. The curfew was beginning soon, and the more moral and honest folk were returning to the sanctuary of their homes, whilst less scrupulous characters—such as himself—were on their way to work.

He passed under an arch whose red paint was peeling away from years of neglect and decay, and he immediately entered into a place reserved only for the wealthy—both old and new—at this time of night. Women sat in window seats and called out to possible patrons as they draped red silks over paper lanterns. The men on the streets slowed their steps every so often to stare, and while many continued on their way, a few broke from the crowd to approach the brothels…or sometimes the women who stood at every corner.

The bull continued on, ignoring the calls and promises of a good time, only halting his step as he came to the entrance of a nondescript building, beaten and weathered with age. The guard at the door let him in without question, and he quickly turned left, jarring open the wall paneling to reveal a set of stairs leading to the upper floors. He closed the hidden entrance tightly behind him, then clopped up the creaky steps, shoving open the door to the annex…

Then he saw red—literally—when he found the room still festooned in decorations from the last festival, and his men and their hired women dressed in red robes as if still celebrating. His men sat around the table in the center of the room, placing bets on their mahjong game and cavorting with the three women they had brought in with them. All three women were clad in revealing red dresses, little more than identical red dressing-gowns, hanging loose around their necks to display bare shoulders, and the robes falling open all the way up to their shapely thighs.

The bull was intrigued; women in this town were most certainly not this good-looking, which meant _these_ females had to be new. One young female sat on one outlaw's lap, her sheer shawl wrapped playfully around his neck, and her cheek demurely resting against his. Her friend, who had a lovely elegance about her and sharp, inquisitive eyes, shared two of the men between her, her graceful hands slowly roving over their bodies as if trying to decide which one to serve first. The last female had hoisted herself up onto the table, but was now looking over her shoulder at the bull as he had entered. One by one, the bull's three underlings fell silent, having caught the enraged look on their employer's face.

"What the hell is this?" he demanded.

The woman perched on the table, a female snow leopard with the most expressive green eyes he had ever seen, pushed herself off the table and approached him. "Don't get mad at them," she said, her voice deep and sultry like a continuous purr. "This is our first time in this big, bad city, and we lost our way. Your friends were just helping us poor country girls."

"That so?" he asked, finding it hard to ignore the female's expressive deep green eyes set like twin emeralds into a delicate, perfectly sculpted face, and a plan immediately entered his mind for these girls. "So're you ladies looking for a job?"

As if reading his mind, the snow leopardess smiled coyly and lowered her eyes, her cheeks turning a light shade of pink. When she finally looked back up at him, she smirked: "You _are_ the job."

Before the bull could react, the green-eyed female grabbed both sides of his head and twisted sharply. His neck snapped before he could let out a sound.

The blue-eyed female tightened her grip on her shawl and ruthlessly tugged in opposite directions. Her target gargled and grabbed for the scarf that had closed off his windpipe, but it took little time for him to cease his struggling enough that she, too, could snap his neck.

The red-eyed female slipped a dagger down from her sleeve and ran it across one man's neck, dodging the spurting blood as she stuck a similar blade from her other sleeve into the other man's jugular. Both men shook violently in the throes of death until they both slumped down into their seats, heads rolling to the side, dead. She checked for a pulse on the one she had stabbed, then nodded in affirmation. "All right, grab it."

Wu Zhu immediately grabbed the gold and paper money left on the game table, shoving it into a bag. Wu Jiang shifted through the dead men's clothes for extra valuables, and snorted when she pulled some papers out of the bull's robe. "False documents—he was trafficking, alright."

"Fine, just hurry up, we have that rendezvous in ten minutes!" Tian hissed. She grabbed their discarded cloaks and threw one to each of her sisters before striding to the window. She pulled a rope and grappling hook from under her dress hem and wedged the hook in the house's eave. Zhu was the first out the window, sliding effortlessly down the rope and landing quietly onto the alley below. Jiang followed soon after, and Tian closely tailed her after taking one last look at the room. Once safely on the ground, she tugged sharply at the hook and deftly caught it just as it came falling down to earth. She coiled it as they ran down the alley, muffling the sounds of clinking coins and footfalls as they ran out into the street, and lost themselves in the crowd heading straight toward the canal.

It would be another hour before the guards would find their employer and the three others dead in the secret annex.

Completely bypassing the inns and taverns on the waterfront, the three females snuck around the side of a dilapidated building and down a set of water-logged steps towards a waiting pleasure boat. There was only one guard, a male lynx, who made no sign of acknowledgment except by letting them inside the covered gondola, and firmly shut the door behind them.

Now that they were safe from prying eyes, Wu Jiang pulled up the collar of the stolen dress robe to cover up her chest. "Ugh, I hate doing jobs like these. Its objectifying, and completely takes advantage of women."

"The hell it does," Wu Zhu said, admiring her figure in a nearby mirror. "If anything, it takes advantage of men who are dumb enough to keep falling for that trick!"

"It has nothing to do with intelligence," Wu Tian said, taking a cue from her sister and fixing her robe so that all necessary parts were covered. "All men are the same. We can hardly be blamed for taking advantage of that."

"After this, can we go find some furnace somewhere?" Jiang asked. "I want to burn this damn thing the first chance I get."

"What's wrong with that dress?" Zhu asked. "Don't you like to feel pretty once in a while?"

"Zhu-Zhu, this thing has _ruffles_."

"So? I _like_ ruffles!"

"_You_ do. For me, it's too frou-frou. _If_ I wear a dress, it's gotta have a little slink."

Zhu huffed and dug her fists into her thin hips. "If you _wanted_ a slinky dress, I could have _gotten_ you a slinky dress. Tian would've given me money for a slinky dress."

"Girls, _focus_," the eldest Wu said. "We only have a few minutes here, lets make it count." She settled down on the cushions around the perimeter and waited for their rendezvous to arrive. The trio didn't have to wait long when the door to the gondola opened and admitted their most recent superior.

"Hey, Boss," Jiang greeted, "How was the trip?"

"Awful as always," the cloaked figure said, settling down across from them. "Did you get the job done?"

Tian held up the fake documents taken off the bull and handed them over. "As promised."

The stranger pocketed the papers without looking at them. "Good. Keep the money, you'll need it. I'm sending you three on another mission."

"Jeez, one right after the other…" Zhu said, sounding rather annoyed.

"If you have a problem with what I pay you," their boss said shortly, "I can take my business elsewhere."

"Don't mind them," Tian said softly, pleasingly. "The authorities have been riding us pretty close the past few days; we're understandably a bit nervous."

"Don't worry about the authorities," their boss said, "they're the least of your concern. There's someone I want taken out of the picture, someone who threatens my position, and my superior's position. I don't care how you do it, I want it done, and done soon."

"What's our deadline?" Jiang asked.

"Winter solstice," the hooded figure said, drawing a folded piece of cloth from inside the cloak. The white cloth was stained with what looked like berry juice to draw a rudimentary map, and a single name:

"Zang Deshi!" Zhu gasped.

"Wait," Jiang said. "That guy from the pass? _That_ Zang Deshi?"

Tian's interest had skyrocketed. "All right, you have our attention…but I hope you know what you're asking for."

"I know exactly what I'm asking for," their manager said. "He's been nothing but trouble for well over a year, and is dangerous to my cause. Do what you want with him. Poison him, stab him, smash in his skull, I don't care how you kill the bastard, but do it, and do it within six weeks."

"Might be a little tricky," Jiang said to her sisters, "what with him and his goons being in the Valley of Peace right now; I don't fancy taking on the Furious Five."

"We'll have to draw him out," Zhu said. "Take the danger of the Five interfering out of the equation."

"The Five weren't in the equation to begin with," their boss said. "I just want Zang taken out, by whatever means necessary. However, I'm going to give you a little something extra for your trouble."

Tian glared at the hooded figure after another bag of gold had been handed to her. "What do you know that we don't?"

The cloaked stranger sighed heavily and brought a gloved hand up beneath the hood, likely to rub the inside corners of unseen eyes. "I have reliable intelligence suggesting Asmodei Koshchei has returned to China."

Tian felt her mouth dry out in horror, and she gasped, "_Him_? How is he still alive?"

"I don't know," her boss replied. "What I do know is that he's not someone you can take on right now. He's coming south, through Gansu, and I want you nowhere near him. I've got my own men on his tail. He's got seven working for him right now, all wolves."

"That won't last long," Jiang snorted. "Not with _his_ track record."

"But why would he return?" Zhu wondered, looking pale and fretful. "He's gotta know how much of a bounty is on his head; he's a fool for coming back!"

"It's because he knows no one will directly try to kill him," Tian said. "No one in their right mind, anyway. If Jiao Shen couldn't kill him, there probably isn't a soul living that can do that."

"What about the Dragon Warrior?" Zhu asked. "He was able to defeat Tai Lung, and then Jiao Shen a year later. If anyone's strong enough to defeat Koshchei, it's gotta be him."

"Either way," their boss coughed, getting them back on-topic, "I don't want you concerning yourselves with Koshchei. If he gets close to where you'll be, I'll send word to you to get the hell out of there. Believe it or not, I care too much about you ladies to let anything happen to you."

"Aww, that's awful sweet of you," Zhu warmly smiled.

Her boss quickly evaporated any goodwill by saying: "You have all my money, and if I lose you, I lose that."

Zhu wrinkled her nose and frowned. "Well, screw you, too, Boss."

Tian shook her head and pocketed the stained cloth. "We'll take on the job. Anything else we should know?"

"Yes. Be careful not to target any of Zang's men. I only want Zang. The other men aren't important."

"They'll blindly follow him," Tian pointed out. "So I consider that pretty important."

"And if they blindly follow _him_," the stranger said, "that makes them doubly dangerous. Anyone who follows orders without question isn't just a puppet—they're a weapon. I can't stress this enough: _be careful_."

The guard outside knocked twice at the door; the shadowy boss drew the cloak closer and whispered, "I have to go. Head back to Hunan, wait for Zang there. Don't go any further north than Hubei, understand? Check in at the Xiao Tou Inn every so often; I'll have correspondence there for you. Remember, you have until Winter Solstice to get the job done."

"Any other instructions?" Tian asked.

The figure had risen and now stooped by the door, the gloved hand on the doorknob. "Play it by ear, and trust your instincts; in the meantime, gods-speed, ladies, and good luck." With a slight tug, their boss opened the door and slipped out into the night.

* * *

As predicted, Sun Bear didn't let up on their training. The next morning, he taught them more yoga, a combination he called "Sun Salutations", which stretched—and stressed—their bodies even further. No amount of painkillers could dull the agony Po felt, but he bore the pain in silence. Complaining about something he couldn't change wouldn't do him any good. Tai Lung took it all in stride, finding the exercise was coming much easier as time went on.

After their practice, they were dismissed for midday meditation, and afterwards, they returned to the posts. And so it went for the next week: mornings of yoga and meditation, and afternoons of balance and other forms of strength training. The whole time, Sun Bear's eyes never left them, the old bear scrutinizing every bit of them.

"Shang," he barked one morning as the panda and snow leopard approached. Po tried not to look completely shell-shocked as he bowed to the old bear. Sun Bear narrowed his eyes at the panda and glared, hands in his sleeves as he studied the other ursine. The silence was tense and terrible, and making Po break out into a cold sweat. He was waiting for it, waiting for the terrible moment when—

"How are your ribs this morning?"

"B'wuh?"

"Your cracked ribs," Sun Bear said with strained patience. "How are they?"

"Wha—oh, oh yeah, I did hurt my ribs, didn't I?" Po said.

The panda grew uncomfortable with the look in the old bear's eyes. The astonished stare soon turned into a glower and a growl.

"You _dare_ mock me!" the old master snapped. "It was only seven days ago you gave yourself a serious injury, one that requires _weeks_ of treatment and rest, and you mock me by continuing your practice—"

"But it doesn't hurt," Po defended. "They haven't hurt since that first day on those pole thingies."

"Do _not_ insult me, Shang!" he glared, taking out his staff, brandishing it threateningly. He stormed forward and yanked on the panda's robe, exposing his side, then quickly jabbed his fingers into his ribs…and froze when Po squirmed and laughed. Po had never seen the old master's eyes that wide before.

Sun Bear collected himself, moving his hand over the panda's side, pressing here and there against the rib cage. As much as Po fought it, he sputtered out laughing, "Stop! C'mon, man, stop it! That tickles!"

Sun Bear stared at him in astonishment, then asked with a stunned tone, "Where…where are the bruises? Where did the fractures go?"

"Whadya mean?" Po asked curiously. "Tenzin checked me out right after it happened, and said there weren't any broken bones; bruises just healed on their own."

The old master straightened, still openly staring, jaw slightly agape. "Shang…I _heard_ the bones crack. You should have been doubled over in pain these past seven days. And yet now you stand here and tell me it _tickles_?"

"Well, it does…" he said sheepishly. He turned to look at Tai Lung, who only shrugged, looking as lost as he was.

"How?" Sun Bear asked with disbelief. "And you tell me it hasn't hurt since…"

"Well," Po said, smiling at Tai Lung. "Tenzin's really good at healing an' stuff."

Sun Bear's dark eyes shifted over to Tai Lung, who, despite being taller and stronger than the old bear, squirmed in discomfort. "Good at healing, are you?" the master asked with an even tone.

Tai Lung swallowed hard. "Small things, really. Picked them up in my travels."

"Like what?" he interrogated.

"Erm, how to dress a wound, cure a cough, fight infection…"

"And how to fix fractures, perhaps?" the bear glared, his voice low and imposing. Tai Lung didn't like that look at all, and, defended himself the best way he knew how:

"Look, old man, I don't know _how_ he got better so quickly! Maybe he just mends faster than you or I!"

Sun Bear glared back at the seething snow leopard. Tai Lung corrected his footing, clearly seeing what was about to happen. Suddenly, the old master struck, bringing his staff down in a vertical arc towards the snow cat's head. Tai Lung blocked it with his forearm, twisted, and caught the staff in his hand. He did a drop-kick and forced the staff out of the bear's hands. But he wasn't done. The snow leopard kicked the staff up into his own hands and twirled it in front of him, brought it behind his back and dropped into a low stance to await the master's attack.

But Sun Bear just stood still. What he said next startled the snow leopard: "So where did you learn Lotus style, Tenzin?"

Tai Lung choked. "L-Lotus style?"

"Yes," the old master said. "I'm not terribly familiar with it, but a lot of your moves are very reminiscent of the ballet…"

Tai Lung very quickly lied, "I took ballet classes for a couple years…for my balance. I had to quit…wrecked havoc on my feet."

"Is that so?" He stared hard a little while longer, then stepped forward. Tai Lung readied himself for the attack, seeking to keep the staff away from the bear who would most certainly use it against him…but instead, Sun Bear held out his hand and gently took the staff from the stunned cat's hands.

"Don't worry," the old master said. "I won't tell anyone. You're not the first warrior to take dance lessons, and you certainly won't be the last." Then he surprised them further by chuckling, "Now that I think of it, it's impossible for _anyone_ to know that style. There hasn't been a recorded master of it in…well, I suppose it's been forty years, now."

Tai Lung swallowed the lump in his throat, willing his heart to stop pounding so furiously against his chest.

"But you dance, do you?" Sun Bear continued. "Interesting…" he paused, nodding absently, and his dark eyes took on a faraway look, "That's very interesting…" After a moment of quiet introspection, the bear drew his yellow robes closer around him and nodded. "Very well, you are dismissed."

"What?" the pair asked.

"But what about our training?" Po asked.

"That's why we're here!" Tai Lung said.

"Really? I thought you were here to find your purpose?" Sun Bear said cryptically, as if there was more behind his words than he was willing to say.

The snow leopard growled. "Training us was _your_ idea, _Master_," he mocked. "And you wouldn't call us out here for nothing!"

"Yeah!" Po agreed. "Isn't there, like, I dunno, more 'yoga' moves, or an obstacle course or…"

Sun Bear incredulously stared at them over his shoulder. "You want to complete the obstacle course? Are you out of your—" he stopped himself, then a slow smile grew on his lips. The kind of smile that told the panda and snow leopard they were exceptionally screwed. "Why, as a matter of fact, there _is_ an obstacle course you can use, if you're interested…"

* * *

If they were expecting something easier than anything Shifu could envision, Po and Tai Lung were severely disappointed. Truly, how anyone could top the Seven Swinging Clubs of Instant Oblivion, or the Gauntlet of Wooden Warriors, or the Field of Fiery Death, was something neither panda nor snow leopard cared to consider.

And yet there they stood, gawking at the course laid before them, wondering if Shifu might have taken pointers from the old bear master. The first arc had spinning spiked maces on poles, followed by a pit of red hot coals twelve feet wide by twenty four feet long that the two had to cross to reach the River of Moving Stepping Stones (floating above a moat that was filled with carnivorous eels), and, by crossing that, they reached the second arc.

The second arc consisted of various trapdoors and booby traps, spinning blades and flumes of fire that shot out of two imposing stone walls forming a slim corridor in the course.

The third arc, however, was the one that made them both gulp; it had a tall wall they needed to climb over, followed by an open field, which looked deceptively simple until a volley of flaming arrows was fired at them from the left, the right, and at forty-five degree angles from above their heads. The obstacle course ended with the successful crossing of a thick white line painted in the dirt on the far side of the field.

Po and Tai Lung stared at the course, then looked at each other, then back at the course. After a pause, the panda looked over his shoulder at the viewing pavilion, where Sun Bear stood watching. Waiting. Expecting them to follow through and complete the course before them…in one piece.

"That guy is psychotic."

* * *

In the pavilion overlooking the course, Sun Bear and First Brother watched the progression of the two newest recruits as they dodged and ducked, and got scorched and struck, all in a desperate attempt to reach the other side alive.

"You, sir, are psychotic," First Brother stated, giving the Grand Master an annoyed look. "No one has used that obstacle course in years. Most of those booby traps don't even work anymore!"

"_They_ don't know that," Sun Bear said with a smirk, watching their progress.

"Master," the old lion said sternly. "You may be my senior, but I _must_ object. You have no reason to torture these men! They have come to us for help, and what do you do? You throw them to the wolves…and that's an insult to wolves everywhere!"

"You would do well to remember your place, First Brother," the old bear said. He crossed his arms and watched the pair, noting their movements, their balance, how they responded to every barrier in their path. "They've been lying to me since they got here. They know more kung fu than they admitted; the panda, especially, is more skilled than he lets on. And I sincerely doubt Shang and Tenzin are their real names."

"Then call them out on it!" First Brother said. "For pity's sake, Master, they're innocents!"

"_Innocents_?" the bear glared at the lion. "If they were so innocent, why would they lie in the first place?"

"Oh I don't know…for their own personal _safety_?" the lion argued.

"But safety from _what_, I ask you," Sun Bear said. "What are they hiding? What is so _important_ that they need to lie about it?"

The lion had nothing to say to that. After a tense silence, he cleared his throat, "Is that why you've been so hard on them?"

"One reason," the old master confirmed. "Another one is that they fascinate me; I want to see how they work, how their minds work, how much pressure they can handle before they crack. For almost two weeks, they tried so hard to hide who they are, and what they are capable of…the only question is why?"

"Why indeed?" his subordinate wondered. "If you think them bandits—like you first suspected—what need would they come all the way here for? All bandits in this region know the tales of this place are fantasy and myth. Most people don't even believe this place exists!"

"Yes, but the panda would believe anything—if I told him an assassin just wanted to have tea and cake with him, he'd probably sit right down and pour two cups. The snow leopard, on the other hand…" Sun Bear narrowed his eyes and trained them on the snow leopard below, who flipped to avoid getting hit by fiery arrows, a surprisingly agile figure for one of his musculature. "It's been a long time since I've known someone so cynical—"

"You mean like you?"

Sun Bear ignored the jibe. Instead, he sucked in a breath when an arrow became embedded in the snow leopard's arm. The panda let out a shout and made his way toward his comrade. Sun Bear's eyes widened with astonishment; First Brother saw the significance.

"You know, I may not get out of the monastery much," the lion said, almost smugly, "But I don't recall any bandits running to the aid of their brethren. Most just cut and run."

"No, they're most certainly not bandits," Sun Bear said, but he peered closer, and saw, as the panda helped the wounded snow leopard off the course, that something was…off…about that cat. He couldn't place it, what that nagging feeling was, tapping on his skull like a persistent reminder. The answer seemed so simple, so clear, but he refused to believe it.

He watched as the snow leopard tore the arrow from his arm, gritting his teeth as the barb tore through his flesh. The panda tore off a strip of his robe to use as a bandage, with which he dressed the wound.

A cloud passed over the sun, casting a grey glow onto the mountain. And that was when he saw it. Sun Bear audibly gasped, eyes wide, and leaned against the railing to get a closer look.

"Master? Master, what do you see?" First Brother asked.

Sun Bear didn't immediately say. Suddenly finding his voice, the old bear said breathlessly, "Something wonderful. I see something absolutely _spectacular_."

First Brother took a step back in surprise at the rare sight: Sun Bear was smiling.

* * *

"…That mother-grabbing son of a—OW—Son of a _bitch,_ that hurt!" Tai Lung hissed. Then, after a pause… "Think he heard me?"

"Probably," Po said, making sure to tie the makeshift bandage firmly. "You need help?"

"No, I just need to sit a spell, I'll be fine."

"You sure?"

Tai Lung leaned up against the low rock wall and took deep breaths as he closed his eyes. "I just…need a moment."

Po, concerned about his friend's sudden pallor, responded, "Ta—Tenzin, maybe we should get you back to your cell—"

"No. No, absolutely not. I'm not going to give that son of a dog the satisfaction!" he stubbornly hissed and leaned back. Pressing his hand against his injured arm, he looked up to the pavilion where the yellow-robed bear was watching them.

Po saw where his gaze had gone. "He's setting us up."

"Of course he is," the snow leopard said. "He's playing us for fools, and I don't like it."

"Why do you think he hates us so much?"

"Beats me," the spotted feline said breathlessly as he recovered. "I'm not sure whether he hates you more, or me."

"I think it's you."

"Why?" he looked at his monochromatic companion. "He's always harder on you in the trials and tests…"

"Yeah, but he's hated you since we got here. I think…" he paused, then leaned in to whisper. "I think he might know who we are."

"Gods, I hope not." He sighed and hoisted himself up. "I hate keeping up a charade, but I don't know if we can really trust him…besides that, I can tell you I'm not winning any popularity contests, and having it be common knowledge that you are the Dragon Warrior might do us more harm than good. Either way, he must suspect that we know more kung fu than we let on."

"A _durr_," Po sarcastically replied, letting his friend lean on him. "You think we should we come clean?"

"About our real identities?" he asked. "Absolutely not. Given the way he's treated us, I'm not sure I can trust him with that knowledge."

"No, I mean, about our skills. Yeah, we don't get yoga, and the posts are a little redundant, but we haven't learned any fighting…"

"Correction, _you_ haven't learned any fighting," Tai Lung pointed out as Po started leading him to the dormitory. "We're here for _you_, remember?"

"I thought we were here for _you_," Po said, confused.

"You heard Sun Bear," Tai Lung hissed. "The Phoenix Scroll is a myth, which means there is no real reason why I should bother staying." He sucked in a breath when pain surged in his injured arm. Catching Po's look, he softened his expression. "I'll stay the whole month, for you."

"But you got your priorities, I know."

They continued on in silence, choosing the back ways to avoid being seen by the other monks. Both knew that it had little to do with pride; they just wanted to avoid any embarrassing questions. They figured there had to be a reason Sun Bear put them through such hell, and instinct told them that what they had just been through would have scared even the most seasoned warrior monk.

Once they got back to their cells, Po helped Tai Lung through the low doorway and laid him down. "Do you need anything?" he asked.

The snow leopard shook his head. "Just…need to rest," he said, his eyelids drooping.

"Okay, buddy. I'll bring you some rice later, after dinner."

But he didn't hear him. Before the panda had finished speaking, Tai Lung had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

He woke up hours later, hearing shuffling outside his cell. He raised himself up on his elbows and saw Po waving to him, a bowl of steaming rice in his hand. The snow leopard sat up and gratefully accepted it, moving to the back of the cell so Po could squeeze in with him.

"How're you feeling?" Po whispered.

"Not as bad as I felt earlier," he said between mouthfuls. "How'd you occupy yourself these last few hours?"

Po thumbed over his shoulder. "The library. Found some neat stuff there, and some stuff you might like."

"Hmm," he said noncommittally. As he continued to eat, he got an uncomfortable feeling, then looked up to see Po staring at him with a long-suffering look. "_What_?" the feline demanded.

"I said, _I found some stuff you might be interested_ _in_," he repeated with fervor.

"I heard you the first time, panda."

Po grabbed him by the front of his robe and pulled him closer to whisper, "I think I found a secret passage, behind one of the bookshelves. Sun Bear _had_ to be lying about the Phoenix Warrior's crypt."

"How…"

"The bookshelf is on an inside wall. How can there be a draft from a wall that doesn't face outside?"

Tai Lung paused, then quickly finished his rice. "I think you're nutters."

"_Tenzin,_" Po growled. "I think you should come and see for yourself."

"In case you've forgotten, _Shang_," he drawled, "I seem to have acquired a wound from a _flaming arrow_…or did that slip your mind?"

"Oh…" Po realized. "Oh yeah! That reminds me," he turned and pulled out some proper bandages and salves. "I found these stockpiled. Figured you needed to get that wound dressed right."

"That _would_ help, yes," he deadpanned, offering his injured arm. Po carefully unwrapped the makeshift bandage and pulled away the fabric, now stiffened with dried blood. Po sucked in a sharp breath.

"I don't need the gory details, mate. I just ate."

"Tai…there's no wound."

The snow leopard's head whipped around to stare at him. "What?"

"Here, look!" Po said, holding up a candle to show him. Tai Lung set down his bowl and looked down at his arm and to his astonishment…the area where the arrow had struck him was completely healed over. If not for the flecks of dried blood still sticking to his fur, there was no evidence at all to suggest he had been wounded just a few hours before.

"Damn…" Po said.

"Three _fen_," Tai Lung smugly tallied.

"Shut up," Po scowled.

The snow leopard gave a quick triumphant grin then focused his attention back on his arm. "Now how the devil…" Tai Lung wondered. He shook his head in awe. "All right, I'm lost."

"I'm not," Po said, a look on his face betraying that he was starting to piece things together. "Listen, I went back to that nook you told me about, where you found the journal. I flipped through it some more…Tai," he said, looking his friend right in the eye to get his point across. "The Phoenix Warrior had the healing touch."

Tai Lung stared at him, awestruck. "…What?"

"He was a healer; anyone he treated got better, no matter what. Think about it," Po explained. "When I broke my ribs, you touched them right after, and the pain started to go away—a week later, still no pain. Before that, Little Brother was supposed to have a fever—he felt a little warm in my arms, but after I handed him over to you, after _you_ held him, he was normal. And now you've gotten shot, and _hours_ later, the wound is gone."

The snow leopard shook his head in awe. "This is unbelievable…"

Po snorted and gave in to his temper, snapping, "Aren't you listening, you idiot? What more proof do you _need_?"

"You call me an idiot one more time, and I'm smashing you through that wall. Don't think I won't." He paused, then asked, "What else did the journal say?"

Po stood and brushed himself off. "I'm not telling you anything more until you come with me to the library and I _show_ you. You obviously think seeing is believing, so I'm going to _show_ you the proof so you can stop being a blockhead and open your stinkin' eyes!"

Tai Lung stared hard, then sighed and stood. "I'm going to let your little tantrum slide, only because I know you're hungry, and I know how you get when you get hungry."

"What're you saying?" Po challenged. "You saying I get crabby?"

"Of course not—I don't want to offend the crabs."

"Why you—" Po flustered. "Y'know, one more crack and I'll Wuxi your fuzzy butt back to Mongolia!"

Tai Lung stopped suddenly, his face suddenly gone pale. Po immediately sobered, seeing—and fearing—that the snow leopard was having another traumatic flashback. "Tai?" he whispered. "Are you okay?"

Tai Lung's fingers ghosted over the spot on his arm where the arrow had punctured him. The flecks of dried blood fell from his fur as he pressed his fingers against the non-existent wound. But the haunted look in his eyes grew deeper and deeper until his whole being stiffened with shock.

"The finger hold…" he breathed. The snow leopard whirled, grabbed the panda's wrist and dragged him along. "Alright, let's go—if I'm right…"

"Right about what?" Po hissed; even though the monks were still at their evening prayers, he felt it best to keep their voices down. Tai Lung, however, had a hard time controlling himself, shakily explaining his thoughts:

"Po, you said the Phoenix Warrior had the ability to heal; I remember Auntie telling me that. Sun Bear said the Phoenix Warrior was supposed to have gone through a complete rebirth of the soul…and that physically dying and coming back to life was a hallmark of the legend." He stopped and turned to him suddenly, just yards from the entrance to the library. The snow leopard gripped the panda by the shoulders, gently shaking him, and his eyes had taken on a wild look as he frantically whispered, "I survived it, Po…I _survived_ the Wuxi Finger hold, something _no one _has _ever_ done before. Jiao Shen said it—'you survived it,' he said, 'you know its secret'…but he was wrong. I _didn't_ know the secret…" he hesitated, then turned to march right for the library's doors, "…but I think I just figured it out."

* * *

Please read and review; I'd like to know if I still got it. ^_^;


	10. Chapter 10: The Descent

Chapter 10: The Descent

Before I begin, I want to apologize for this chapter's length. There is also a LOT going on, and perhaps too much was pushed into this chapter than there needed to be. But, meh, you got your warning.

The first of three Big Reveals will occur at the end of this chapter. Be prepared!

Disclaimer: I don't own it, not doing any of this for profit.

* * *

The library was dark and absolutely deserted. Even the scribes usually so hard at work were away from their desks, their candles long since extinguished and their quills and brushes laying out to dry on soft cloths. Po and Tai Lung crept past the desks and in between the maze of shelves until coming to the little nook the snow leopard had discovered. Po had had the foresight to bring a lit candle; he touched it to a large, thick candle set in a wall sconce on one side of the book shelf.

He took hold of his friend's wrist and showed him with painstaking slowness, just where he had felt the draft through the wall. Tai Lung's eyes visibly brightened in recognition, with mingled perplexity. "It is as you said," he whispered. "How could I have missed this?"

"I almost missed it, too," Po whispered back as he set his candle on the empty, dusty desk. "I don't get a draft anywhere else in here, except by the door or windows, but this room doesn't have any windows, and no doors."

"Not that we can see, anyway." the snow leopard knelt and felt along the edges of the bookshelf until his fingers ghosted over the Phoenix Warrior's journal. "Still here, excellent…"

"Don't you want to see if there's a secret passage?" Po asked, still in hushed tones.

"That's what I'm trying to find," Tai Lung responded, putting the open book on the desktop and flipping through the pages. "A journal is meant to be read only by the writer, or whoever happens upon the journal after the writer's passing. He might have left a clue or something in here…aha! Here's something about this temple's construction…made not too long after the Jade Palace was constructed."

"I wonder if they're connected?" the panda wondered as he scrutinized the bookcase.

"It's possible," Tai Lung agreed. "If the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior knew each other, they may have shared more than just kung fu secrets. Hmm…looks like there were plans made to have escape corridors, in the event of an attack."

"Attack?" Po asked dubiously. "You'd have to have some pretty wicked bad karma to attack a monastery…" But even as he said it, he realized— "This wasn't a monastery…" Po breathed.

"What?"

The panda turned away from the wall to stare at his friend's back. "Think about it—this was built to be a fortress. The Jade Palace wasn't built with all the modifications this place has."

"Well of course it wasn't. It doesn't need it," the feline reasoned. "It's on top of a tall mountain, populated by kung fu masters, and lies on the opposite side of a deep, bottomless chasm. With all that…"

"Who needs a security system?" Po quipped.

Tai Lung wryly smiled, "Exactly. Hmm… Hullo, what's this?"

"What's what?"

Tai Lung beckoned him over to read a passage in the journal: "It looks like the guidelines for identifying the Phoenix Warrior… 'My successor shall be known as a man to have lived, died, and been resurrected. His soul will be cleansed after a generation buried beneath the earth, a generation served in the deepest pit of the Hell for his sins. His coming will be marked by flames and destruction. From the fires of Hell he emerges and takes flight…'" he frowned, "and the rest of the ink is smudged."

"Still more than we knew before," Po said helpfully. "Buried for a generation…like, buried alive or something?"

Tai Lung shuddered, "I wouldn't want that, certainly…" He glanced over at Po, who had a particularly sober look on his face. "Oh come on, there's no way this can all be taken literally. No one has ever died then come back to life a generation later."

But Po wasn't so sure. In fact, the more he thought about the guidelines, however vague they were...the more his glances at his friend's back became stares.

Tai Lung, however, ignored him and idly flipped a few more pages and found—to his delighted shock—a creased scroll in the middle of the book, acting as a type of bookmark. He extracted it and carefully unrolled part of it and found— "Mother's love!" the snow leopard gasped. "Blueprints!"

"Whoa, dude!" Po scrambled up next to him, as giddy as a child on New Year's. "That is so cool! They're even labeled." He helped the snow leopard unroll and unfold the thin papers—five in all—one for each wing of the monastery. One for the barracks, one for each pagoda, one for the main hall and one—

"Look! This one's for the library!"

Po pointed a clawed digit at one seemingly insignificant rectangle in the dead center of the blueprint. "And this is where we are. You know what that image means?"

"I've a feeling you're about to tell me."

"Remember when we helped renovate the Chin's family home last year? Remember the carpenter explaining all the symbols and stuff? This one, a rectangle with a bunch of lines through it, means stairs."

"But there aren't any stairs in this room."

Po frowned, running his fingers along the walls and pressing his cheek up against the bare rock. "Then there's gotta be a secret entrance to them. Dude, this is just like those old treasure stories my dad used to tell me when I was a kid!" While he ignored Tai Lung's eye roll, the panda crept along the bookcase and suddenly felt something. His claws had dug into the stone, but instead of a natural crack or formation, the line was far too straight to have been nature. Feeling a rush of excitement, Po quickly turned to Tai Lung and pointed at the candle in the sconce.

"I think I found something! Here, hand me that candle."

Tai Lung obeyed without taking his eyes off the blueprints, reaching up and taking the candle out of the wall sconce. He never got the chance to hand it to Po. As soon as the candle had cleared the wall, he felt a whoosh of air and jumped back in alarm as the wall _moved_. One minute he had been standing next to a panda examining a wall of books, and now both panda and bookcase were replaced with a solid slab of unfinished rock…and neither were nowhere to be found. The snow leopard panicked, looking desperately for a way to open the wall again—

Then he heard tapping on the other side of the wall and a highly muffled voice shouting: "Put. The Candle. BACK."

Had he heard that right? The snow leopard pressed his ear to the stone and waited. He heard the tapping again, and the same muffled order. _So what the hell does a candle have to do with…? _Then he outwardly groaned when he realized it. He stood up and pressed his fingers into the sconce—a tripped switch! The candle's weight triggered the switch that must have opened the secret door!

_How very clever…maybe if I'd been better fed, I would have picked up on that sooner. _He replaced the candle, and as soon as he firmly set the candle in its holder, the wall revolved again, on a central axis, admitting Po back into the room. The panda looked back at the wall behind him, then over to his friend…and grinned. "Okay, one, that was so freakin' cool! And two… I tol'ya there was a door."

"Charming," Tai Lung drawled. "So now that we know how to get in…"

Po pressed himself against the wall again, a somewhat manic grin on his face. "Not so fast—you took that candle out of the holder and the wall made a whole rotation. We just need it to turn 90 degrees, not 180!"

The snow leopard raised a brow. "…All right."

Po pulled his robes closer to his body and leaned up against the edge of the bookcase again. "So let's try again; maybe I can stop the door with my body—"

"Erm, Po, I'm not sure that's a good—"

"It'll be fine. What's the worst that can happen?"

Tai Lung scowled. "Just so you know, I'm putting that on your tombstone."

"Cute. Remove the candle."

Tai Lung sighed and waited until he was sure Po was ready, then lifted the candle from its holder. Unfortunately, the snow leopard had not paid close enough attention to how close he was standing to the wall…so that when he lifted the candle, the wall rotated, catching both of them in its rotation. The snow leopard dropped the candle and it clattered the floor and went out. But this was the least of their worries. The wall had done a complete rotation, and now both panda and snow leopard were trapped on the other side…and no one knew where they were.

* * *

"Auntie? Do you have a minute?"

The elderly red panda peered over the rim of her reading glasses and spied Su Lin standing at her office door. It was still early, and the red panda's classes were not due to begin for another hour; Su Lin's shift at the restaurant wasn't to begin until later that morning. Wu Lien, of course, started her day as always: waking before dawn to enjoy quiet meditation and a cup of tea with her husband before both parted ways for the day, he to his students in the training hall, and she to her school at the foot of the mountain. Some days she got in early enough to check her star charts in her office; this was becoming less frequent now that she had a school to run, and she welcomed any opportunity to engage in an old pasttime.

She beckoned the young female inside her small office, minimally decorated but for the long, low bookcase behind her desk; it held all almanacs, scrolls, books and ledgers she used for both business and pleasure. "Of course, I've always got time for you, Su-Su. Let me just put away these charts—"

Su Lin moved quickly and put her palm down on top of the almanac. "No. I need it," she forcibly said. She paused, swallowed hard, then corrected herself, "I know something's…off about me. It's nothing physical that I can tell. It has to be _chi_-related, and you're the only person I can talk to about it."

"It could also be in your head, dear," Wu said, gently nudging the panda's hand off her book. She was surprised to hear the sudden aggression in the panda's tone when she shortly replied,

"Auntie, I am _not_ crazy." Well...Su Lin didn't look crazy, but she certainly looked mad.

Quickly regaining her composure, the red panda woman asked, "Did I say you _were_?" Wu hopped down off her seat and trotted over to her bookcase to scan the titles. "Shifu has taught me—by observation, mind—that prolonged mental distress can have sometimes debilitating consequences on physical health. As Oogway once explained to him, if one of the 'chakras' is off, then it throws the whole body out of balance."

"Yes!" Su Lin exclaimed. "That's exactly how I feel! I know something's wrong, but I don't know what it could be. And what the heck is a chakra?"

"I think it's like _chi_, but pooled in specific parts of the body; I hardly understand it myself. Ah, here we are." She pulled a book out and began flipping through the pages as she walked back to her desk. Books had been stacked like stairs to allow her access to the high desk and chair that had been gifted her. "Let's see…You're a Sheep, right?"

"That's right."

"Also called 'Goat' or 'Ram' in some regions…" she read; she ran her finger across the page, intermittently reading aloud certain sections. "A Yin sign, associated with mid-summer, the early afternoon hour, the sixth month of the year, and—a_ha_! Read here…"

Su Lin peered at where the red panda's finger was pointing. "'Fixed element…fire'? I thought I was a water personality?"

"You are. The year you were born in makes you a Fire-Water Sheep. Read what water does to you: 'if the water element is out of balance, it is associated with fear and anxiety. The proper balance ensures intelligence and wisdom, but also can cause difficulty in making decisions and sticking by them.' Tell me, does that sound familiar?"

Su Lin chewed on her bottom lip and looked away; Wu could tell that the panda agreed with her. The younger female was a bit more timid and shy than most people she knew, but that didn't explain her recent aggression. "I…I guess I _am_ afraid," Su Lin confessed. "I've always been afraid. And now I can't make a decision about me and Po…I feel like I'm lost, and don't know where to turn…"

"But," the matriarch pointed out, "remember you are a _fixed_ fire sign as well. Your water has just out-balanced the fire. This isn't entirely a bad thing, because it keeps and restores balance. Water can be weak and fluid, but never forget that river floods and monsoons are probably the most devastating disasters we face. Now, as for the fire that is your fixed element…let's do a little compare and contrast. Now, Tai Lung has quite a bit of fire…"

"But he is like the wildfire," the panda protested, "completely unstoppable and impossible to be contained once it is let loose." This examination sounded harsh to Wu's own ears, even as she knew it to be true. Though he had made remarkable strides since his escape from prison, Tai Lung still had that temper, and though he rarely got, well, _pissed _for lack of better word, it didn't take much to irritate him.

Wu agreed with her: "Exactly, unless he seeks to contain himself, which isn't always easy for a fire person; you, on the other hand, are like a fire contained in a hearth. You offer warmth against the cold, a means to provide food and sustenance, and light to see the way. Unlike Tai Lung, you are always in full control of the fire in your soul. However, if I may be so bold…you've tried to control it _too much_."

The female panda frowned. "How is that a bad thing? Fire is destructive; I mean, using Tai Lung as an example…well, enough said."

"Agreed."

"But doesn't it make sense to want to control fire?"

"Fire cannot be controlled so easily. _None_ of the elements can be controlled, not completely. People are funny that way; the more they try to control and outsmart Nature, the more Nature comes back to hurt them." Wu flipped back to the beginning of the book to the chapter about the Five Elements. "Fire is associated with strength and perseverance, but it can also lead to restlessness…do you feel restless?"

It didn't take long to reach her answer: "…Yes. Yes, I do."

Wu hummed in agreement, flipped a page, and continued, "It provides warmth and creativity, but excess of it breeds aggression and impulsive behavior. To put it simply, a little fire—like a candle—is good, but too much burns you in more ways than one."

"So I just need to figure out how to control the water aspects of my personality, and let go of the fire?"

"Oh _heavens_ no!" the red panda declared. "Don't _completely_ let go of the fire…but loosen the leash a bit." Then she unceremoniously closed the book and dropped it into the pile by her feet. She leaned back in her seat and steepled her hands, looking at her young charge over the rim of her glasses again. "Metaphors aside, let's consider the following: You were born under a Yin sign in a Fire-Water year. There is an overabundance of Yin in your character, probably not helped by our dearly beloved 'traditional values'," she said with a sarcastic tone and ironic brow. "You have been told since infancy to hide your true feelings because it's unbecoming of a woman to be overly emotional or speak her mind. You need to be calm and collected at all times, and never lose your temper. And you always have to defer to a man for every move you make. That is not in the Sheep's personality; the sign has a duality, too, if you'll recall. Sheep—the follower—and the Ram—the leader. If I can hypothesize…you've been a follower for so long that it's dragging you down. You _want_ to be a leader, for once. You _want_ to be stubborn and impulsive. You _want_ to do whatever the hell you want just for the hell of it! In short, you're so tired of being fearful and guarded that you don't want to be _like_ Tai Lung, you want to _be_ him: impulsive, aggressive—_free_."

"That's silly," the giant panda said. "I'm not unhappy, and I'm fine being a follower. There's less risk of getting hurt."

"Think about what you just said," Wu instructed. "You don't want to be fearful anymore, but you also don't want to leave your comfort zone."

"Auntie, I'm not like you," she said shortly. "I'm not independent, and I _like_ my comfort zone. For the first time in my life, you're right, I don't have to defer to a man for every decision; I can make my own decisions, make my own money, and I'm not controlled by anyone."

"Aren't you?"

Su Lin stared at her. "What do you mean?"

Wu sighed, removing her reading glasses. "Su Lin, I'll be frank: you _are_ being controlled. And I think I understand what's really going on here. You're right that you like having this freedom, but this freedom is also rather frightening because sometimes, you're right, it _isn't_ safe. But a life lived in fear of leaving the house is not a life I would wish on my worst enemy. It's not a life at all! But what's holding you back isn't an individual, it's a convention. You want to make your family happy and proud of you, but at the same time…now that you've tasted freedom, something other than domesticity, you realize you've got other options in your future than to be a wife and mother. You have a career, and freedom, and getting married and having children means giving up that freedom…and that frightens you more than anything else."

"No...no, that's not true. That's not true at all!" she stubbornly denied, and very heatedly. "You're _wrong_; I am _not_ being controlled, and I am _not_ afraid of getting married!"

Wu silently stared at her, and it looked like she was weighing the merits of saying something. At last minute, however, she decided to drop it. "All I'm saying…just think about it. You're right; I could be way off the mark, but bear in mind that while all this is really a shot in the dark, it is based on my observations and my humble opinion." She smiled half-heartedly. "I just want you to be happy, dear, and right now you're not. Know that if you need anything—and I _mean_ anything—don't hesitate to ask."

Su Lin stared back at her mentor, seemingly weighing her own internal questions, before standing and excusing herself to leave. "I know. Thank you, Auntie."

"You're quite welcome. Oh, and Su Lin? If you feel like punching anybody, particularly a gorilla with a face only a mother could love, I'd really appreciate it if you did so on your way out."

She stopped and asked, "The same gorilla I hit with the skillet?"

Wu rolled her eyes, "Unfortunately. He came around yesterday for my 'interview'. Bah, _interrogation_, more like. He left with a few injuries though."

The panda's jaw dropped. "Auntie, you didn't!"

The red panda shrugged, appearing just as surprised as the younger panda. "Actually, I didn't. Shifu did. Apparently the two of them have some sort of grudge…" she shrugged again. "Men, what can I say?"

"They're weird?"

Wu smirked, "Atta girl. Don't work too hard today, I know it'll be busy, but…"

Su Lin nodded. "Don't worry; I'll mind not to stretch myself too thin."

* * *

Unfortunately for Su Lin, she didn't get much of a choice. All but two of the other waitstaff had called out sick, and the restaurant was unseasonably busy. It was only Su Lin and one ewe and one female rabbit covering nearly thirty tables of varying sizes. Though many customers were well enough aware of the situation and short-staffing, most didn't seem to care. They demanded service, superior service, even if there were only three waitresses that day. Behind the counter in the kitchen, Su Lin knew that Dalang had to be muttering a storm of foreign curses as he sautéed onions and ginger, and even Mr. Ping looked harried and short-tempered as he furiously chopped vegetables for the soups.

"Waitress!"

Speaking of short-tempered…

The female panda turned in the direction of the shout and only barely suppressed a groan. Mr. Lu, the cantankerous old goat, was glaring right in her direction, his bowl untouched.

_Please_, she pleaded to whatever god was listening, _not now…_ "Yes, Mr. Lu, is there something wrong?"

"Is something wrong? Of course something is wrong!" he snapped, slamming his hoof on the tabletop. "This is the single worst service I've ever experienced! Those dumplings are undercooked and not fit for beggars! And these noodles are hard and crunchy—is Ping even bothering to _cook_ his food anymore?"

Su Lin looked over her shoulder at the kitchen…and both Ping and Dalang had heard the goat's loud complaint, if their grim expressions were any clue. In fact, Ping seemed to be chopping with a firmer hand, er, wing than usual. And Dalang's whiskers were twitching…a dangerous sign.

"You look at me when I'm talking to you, you little fool!" Lu snapped. "Absolutely disgraceful! It's a wonder anyone still comes to this dump. The tables are never clean, soup is either too hot or too cold, and no matter what, the service is always terrible!"

She took a deep breath and asked, "Would you like me to get the manager for y—"

"Don't interrupt me!" By now, Mr. Lu had gotten the attention of the entire restaurant. Patrons looked between him and the female panda he was berating, with mingled looks of pity and fury. But the goat ignored them. "You young people are so shameful, and so rude! It's that Wu woman being a bad influence, I'm sure! Service here used to be at least _decent_ when it was still Ping's Noodle Shop, now it is just _disgraceful_! And if _you_ behaved in the way women were _supposed_ to behave, this would never have been an issue!"

Su Lin stood there—just stood—for a moment, staring catatonically at the goat. Mr. Lu, of course, felt he was fully justified, even as his fellow patrons felt he had crossed the line. The other customers looked at Su Lin, fearing that at any moment, the poor girl would burst into tears.

She swallowed hard and blinked a few times before she shakily said, "I'm so very sorry. I will go get you another bowl, you crabby old grouch."

"That's—_what_?" the goat gasped. He had meant to say 'well, that's better!' and what he heard was most certainly _not_ what he was expecting from the normally polite and subservient female. But now Su Lin had put down her tray and dug her fists into her hips, adopting a look of utmost fury that no one had ever seen grace her pretty face. A look of utmost fury that told the goat that he was about to get one hell of a chewing out.

"_Every_ time you come in here, all we hear is complaining!" she growled through clenched teeth, her whole body shaking with suppressed anger. "If I have been rude, that's one thing, but I have been _nothing_ but civil to you, and though you ask for me _specifically_ every time you come in, not _once_ have you _ever_ treated me with any kindness or respect! As far as I'm concerned," she said, snatching his dishes and utensils away. "You can take you business elsewhere, and I will be _thrilled_ to see the back of your head…you _old fool_!"

Mr. Lu only sat and stared as she stormed off, back to the kitchen where both Mr. Ping and Dalang were similarly in awe of her sudden sour mood. Wordlessly, and still fuming, she threw the bowls' contents in a rubbish bin and dropped the empty dishes into the wash basin. Turning to face them with a no-nonsense glare, she snapped, "WHAT?"

Goose and tiger jumped back in alarm and simultaneously placated her with: "Nothing!"

"Everything is fine," Ping assured.

"Not a damn thing wrong," Dalang agreed with an uneasy smile. "Keep doin' what you're doin'."

She crossed her arms and demanded, "All right, say it. Say something; go on, we _all_ know you want to!"

"Say…what?" Dalang asked, sharing a worried look with Mr. Ping.

"_Say it_!" she snapped. "Say 'this isn't like you, Su' or 'You know better than to talk like that, Su Lin' or…_something_!"

Goose and tiger chefs shared another look. Dalang shrugged and Ping spoke for the both of them:

"Su Lin?" he said with a perfectly straight face.

"Yes, sir?" she asked, preparing herself for the lecture that was sure to come.

"We are so…" then a grin quickly bloomed on his beak, "_proud_ of you!"

The panda blinked, startled and confused. "B'wuh?"

"Yeah," Dalang said with a smirk. "We're proud of you. Hell, I wanted to tell that old coot off for _months_."

"I've been waiting _years_ to tell him that!" Ping laughed. "I don't think even Po would have dared to say anything! I don't know what's gotten into you, but if it means losing Mr. Lu as a customer, who cares?"

"Is he really that bad?" she asked.

"Yes," both males concurrently and flatly responded.

"So…I'm not in trouble for poor customer service?"

"Not in _my_ kitchen, you're not," Dalang said. "I'm not sure what's going on…but I'm glad to see you like this."

"You are? But I was so rude to him—"

"Fuck 'im," the tiger shrugged.

"I have to agree, but not in so many words…" the goose concurred, with a disapproving look at the tiger. "Sometimes people like that need a taste of their own medicine."

"Even if you lose a customer?" she asked.

"With Lu gone," Dalang said as an aside to Ping, "More customers might come in, knowing he ain't comin' back."

"See?" Ping smiled at the panda. "What did I tell you? Every cloud has a silver lining!"

Su Lin finally smiled. "You know…you're right. And it felt _good_ to give him a piece of my mind. Maybe I shouldn't have been so abrupt but…darn it, it felt _great_!"

"Atta girl," Dalang smiled. "Now, you going on that lunch break or am I gonna hafta throw you out of the restaurant too?"

"No need," she giggled. "This is starting to look like a better day already!"

"Um…" Dalang suddenly said warily. "You might've spoken a little too soon." He pointed out the open window at the courtyard, and both Ping and Su Lin groaned in defeat. The tiger chef turned to his boss and asked, "You want I should show him a little Jiao Family Hospitality?"

Ping looked back at the front doorway at Captain Zang and Cadet Hu and sighed. The black horse had been causing quite a stir in the village in the past week, he and his goons interrogating as many people as possible about Tai Lung. That awful gorilla had even reduced a few elderly customers to tears one day. If Mr. Ping had been a more aggressive man, well, that gorilla would be short two ears and a tongue for that!

But, the goose was not a violent man, so he answered, "I do not know what that 'hospitality' is, young man, and I'm not sure I want to know. I think I can safely say it won't be necessary. So stop sharpening your knife."

Dalang sent him an innocent look, even as he continued to sharpen his favorite knife. "What? It was getting dull!" The chef then stared at the young cadet who had opted to stand behind his commanding officer as the horse sat at the empty table Mr. Lu had just vacated. "Who's the kid?"

"Oh, that's Cadet Hu," Ping said enthusiastically. "Rather good manners, not a thug at all, unlike his friends. He interviewed me two days ago—a very fine young man! Strikes me as rather familiar, though…like I've met him somewhere before…"

Dalang locked eyes with the young tiger across the courtyard; the former narrowed his eyes at the other, who hurriedly looked away. "Yeah, funny you mention that…"

"So what do we do?" Su Lin asked. "Do we offer him something to eat?"

"The _hell_ we do," Dalang growled. "He still owes us an apology. If it were up to me, I wouldn't serve him a rotting onion!"

Mr. Ping, however, sighed and shook his head. "No, young man, but it _is_ up to _me_." The goose hesitated, then said unambiguously, "If he orders something, let him have it, but do not offer him anything he hasn't asked for. It may not be my place to make an example of anyone, but as long as this is still my restaurant, I will not reward bad behavior."

"Gods, I'm glad I started working for you," Dalang told him appreciatively.

Su Lin sighed heavily and glared back at the horse, who had taken out a scroll and piece of charcoal, and was scribbling something down. She huffed and dug her fists into her hips and said, "I'm sure as heck not going to serve him."

"Don't gotta," the Amur tiger said. "He's not breakin' any rules by just sitting and writing, but the minute there's trouble, he's gone."

The panda nodded, then gasped in horror. "Oh no…we won't have to wait long. Look!"

Ping and Dalang both looked to the door…and both chefs (the former rather uncharacteristically) cursed. Sonam had chosen that moment to return from running an errand for his daughter-in-law, who was now confined to strict bed rest, and had stopped short in front of the horse. The scarred snow leopard knew on instinct whom he was staring at, and curled back his lips into a snarl.

Even Mr. Ping was surprised at the speed at which he scaled the courtyard to intercept the old leopard, jumping in between the two would-be combatants in a flurry of feathers. "Sonam! Good to have you back, old friend! Why don't you take the groceries to the pantry, hm? I trust you got the ginger and garlic for Mei Xing—she's doing well, by the bye, I sent her up a cup of tea earlier, and she should be sleeping now…"

"I'd be happy to, Ping old boy," Sonam said, baring his fangs and still glowering at Zang, "But if you don't mind, I think I should first take out the trash."

Zang cast a stern look at Mr. Ping…and a much sterner one at Sonam. "Am I to assume you are the fathers of this home's missing residents?"

"If by that," the goose said evenly, with no hint of discourtesy, "You mean is the Dragon Warrior my son? The answer is yes." The normally jovial tone and expression were now conspicuously absent, and Mr. Ping knew he certainly wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable. A few of his customers had picked up their bowls and had moved further away…probably to avoid being in the line of fire if and when Sonam attacked the Captain.

"And you, I assume," the black horse said as he stared at Sonam with a queer smile, "are Sonam, Tai Lung's father, and the Jade Palace's Blacksmith. Quite an illustrious title, you must be proud."

Sonam smiled thinly, dumping his sack of groceries on the nearest empty table. "I'm proud of many things, Captain. Especially my son."

The dark horse returned his icy grin as he jotted down some notes. "Of course, what father wouldn't be proud of all the things his son has accomplished? But surely you regret _some_ things, don't you?"

"Not really," the snow leopard shrugged. "The boy's made mistakes, like everyone does. Do I agree with all of his choices? No. If you're inquiring about his stint in prison and his escape…well, having served time once, I can't say I blame him. Prison's no picnic."

"You're an ex-convict? Really?" Zang said with supreme interest, still energetically writing. "What were you imprisoned for?"

Sonam grinned with great mirth, but on his scarred face, it took on a frightening and rather grotesque look…and when he realized this, it only made the old blacksmith happier to see how uneasy the horse looked. "Got arrested for starting a brawl," Sonam said. "In me defense, the man I punched was the one t' question me wife's honor. I hold honor to a pretty high standard."

"Do you?"

"Aye. Anyone who dishonors me—I'll knock his block off. Anyone who dishonors my _family_…I'll kill them."

Zang visibly shivered, but judging from his expression, he had no idea why he had reacted in such a way. But he quickly recovered and continued, "It helps to know you don't always agree with your son…however, murder is not a 'mistake'."

"Sure it is—people kill other people by accident all the time."

"I _SAW_ what he did to those men!" Zang suddenly roared as he stood, slamming his fists into the tabletop. "I _saw_ their remains in that cave, some of them completely mutilated beyond recognition. You call that an _accident_?" he shrieked. "They were ripped to shreds, men I fought with, men I considered brothers! And that _beast_ did that do them! How _DARE_ you stand here and tell me that was a _mistake_!"

Sonam's smile had quickly evaporated into a stony, pale stare.

"As far as I'm concerned," Zang finally seethed. "Hanging is too good for the man that did that to them."

Sonam swallowed hard. "I see." After a pause, he asked, "And you think my son is responsible for that?"

"Who _else_ would have such a vendetta against the Anvil of Heaven?" Zang demanded.

"Oh, I can think of a few."

Zang jumped and nearly tripped over his chair when Shifu finally spoke up. Always the master of stealth, Shifu had taken his time to see where the interview was going, then made his presence known when he saw it had taken a sudden turn for the worse. He glowered at the horse a moment, then thinly smiled…which for anyone who _knew_ Shifu, knew that Zang was about to get the lecture of his life.

"Let's be realistic here, shall we, Captain?" he began pleasantly enough as he stood across from him. "Commander Vachir and his men were known throughout the empire as great warriors who defeated their enemies with strength and fortitude. But they still had enemies, _many_ of them. Tai Lung may be an obvious suspect, but by no means is he the only one. Need I bring up the Lizards of Lao-zhou County? After Master Flying Rhino, they, of course, would have salivated at getting revenge through the Anvil of Heaven. And what about the Western Yak clans? I wager they're not very chummy with Vachir, not after _that_ gentleman's feud—"

"I am aware of that feud, sir," Zang said shortly, but immediately cowed when Shifu glared at him. The grip around the peach wood staff tightened, and the red panda said behind gritted teeth,

"The _point_, Zang," he said, deliberately dropping the horse's military title, "Is that they had _many_ enemies. You think that Tai Lung is the _only_ enemy of the Furious Five, just because he fought them _once_?"

"If you are who I believe you to be," Zang said with a strained tone, "I believe the only reason you defend such an _animal_ is because you have a personal attachment, Master Shifu."

"Ah, so you believe that personal attachments can affect one's judgment?"

"I do."

Shifu openly smiled in triumph; this was how Zang knew he had fallen into the old red panda's trap. "Why, Captain Zang, I am so glad you agree." Expertly twisting the staff in his small hand, he pointed the staff's tip towards the door. "Now, why don't you go back to the capital and kindly ask His Excellency to assign another person to this case…someone without a bias."

"This is not to be borne," Zang said, daring to snap back. "You are ordering around a high official within the Imperial Arm—"

"And _you_ are questioning the orders of a kung fu master that could snap your legs like toothpicks." Shifu raised an eyebrow at the horse. "Think about it."

This argument thus deflated, Zang tried another approach. "You are not the magistrate, Master Shifu."

"And last I checked, Captain, neither are you—which means you are not lord over this valley either."

"And yet you act like you _are_. For reasons I shall never understand, the Jade Palace has operated with impunity for years, an impunity which I'm sure you have exercised any chance you've gotten. You and Oogway are very similar in that regard."

"That's _Master_ Oogway to you," Shifu growled. "And if you value the ability to walk, I suggest you leave. Now."

Zang sniggered, "What's the matter, Shifu? Can't take what you dish out? Or are you so proud that you can't take any criticisms whatsoever? For that matter, you know what people outside this valley say about Oogway, and I am not the only one who thinks him a coward and a traitor to the empire. He was a charlatan, a usurper of the Emperor's power, and should have received the same fate as any traitor to the crown."

Shifu barely managed to rein in his righteous fury, tapped his staff on the ground and gritted out, "Say that to my face."

Zang took up his challenge, and stood to get in close enough to hiss through gritted teeth, "I said 'your master Oogway was a filthy, low-life _traitor_.' What are you going to do about it," he asked, finishing with an insult, "you ring-tailed _tree rat_?"

Shifu suddenly smiled. "Nothing. I was just waiting for him to sneak up behind you."

When Zang turned to look, he got up close and personal with Master Monkey's fist, which instantly knocked him to the floor. Monkey brushed dust off his hands and cracked his knuckles. The fuming look did not immediately leave the simian's face, but still he turned to his master and bowed respectfully. "Forgive me, Master Shifu—I reacted in anger."

"As your master, I have no choice but to forgive you, Master Monkey," Shifu said, finding it difficult to hide his proud smile. "But I do believe you owe Captain Zang an apology for hitting him because he insulted the memory of a most beloved citizen of the Valley of Peace."

Zang snorted and hissed, nearly getting violent as Quon helped him to stand. The horse's nerve left him, however, as soon as he realized Shifu and Monkey were not the only kung fu masters present in the restaurant…and they were not the only ones who had heard his insolent comment. Master Tigress looked angrier than any picture ever painted of her. Master Mantis looked ready to rip out the warhorse's spleen. Master Monkey had to be held back by both Master Viper _and_ Master Crane, but neither of the married pair looked ready to forgive the captain. Despite his reputation, for example, Master Crane looked absolutely _livid_, and despite the knowledge that she had no venom, Zang didn't fancy getting bitten by Viper…which she looked absolutely ready to do.

"Quon?" Zang finally asked his subordinate.

"Yes, sir?" the tiger youth quietly asked.

"Is there any way for me to retreat with my dignity intact?"

Quon dubiously looked back at the five kung fu warriors and their master, plus the one-eyed snow leopard and the knife-wielding tiger chef behind the counter. Not even Mr. Ping was above glaring daggers at the soldiers.

"I think your only option is ritual suicide, sir."

"I was afraid of that."

Mr. Ping cleared his throat and waddled back to the kitchen counter, picked up his largest chef's knife, and began sharpening it; he meant nothing by it, of course, for there was simply not a violent bone in the goose's body. He had no idea how menacing his knife-work could be to complete strangers; he just needed something to do to hide his shaking hands, because telling off even a simple foot soldier would mean speaking against the emperor…truly a dangerous game. And, well, that knife _was_ starting to get a bit dull anyhow. "Now, Captain," he said calmly. "I am in the business to provide only the best food and even better customer service…" he then looked up at the horse, "So, to best serve my customers, I am afraid I must ask you to leave."

Master Crane backed him up, stepping forward and making very it clear: "I don't speak for the management, but if I—or any of my comrades—ever see you here again, we'll drag you out of this valley ourselves. Are we clear, _Captain_?"

Zang glared back at the avian, then sniffed and replied, "Very clear, Master Crane. I believe our investigation has acquired sufficient evidence." He leaned down and rolled up his scroll, depositing it into a pocket on the inside of his cloak. "We will no longer be of concern to you and yours. Rest assured, you will not be seeing us again—not unless you give us good reason to come back."

"We won't," Tigress snapped, unsheathing her claws. "Now get out."

Not one to miss a parting shot, Zang said, "You do realize you are all protecting a dangerous madman—"

"Yeah, but he's _our_ madman," Mantis snapped from Monkey's shoulder, then both of them pointed the door. "Now get the hell out."

The Captain and his cadet swiftly packed up their things and made straight for the door, but Quon held back a moment, giving the Furious Five and their master and sorrowfully apologetic look before following his commanding officer out of the restaurant and out of sight.

"I feel sorry for that boy," Monkey said as Quon hurried off.

"Ditto," Mantis said. "He's not bad—he interviewed me earlier. He's a good, salt-of-the-earth kinda kid. He's in the wrong business with _that_ guy, though."

"This whole thing bothers me," Viper said. "This is the first thing we've heard about a pardon for Tai Lung since the Jiao War…why wait so long?"

"I'll tail them," Crane said definitively. "Make sure they actually do as they say and leave the Valley."

"If you do, Crane," Shifu said, "Remember the Castle Law—as long as it is within our borders, you can defend your home as you see fit…by whatever means necessary."

"You mean _kill them_?" Viper asked, horrified. "Master, I _must_ protest—that would only spell more trouble!"

"Oh, there'll be trouble, all right," Shifu said. He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a scroll. The red panda unrolled it and handed it over to Monkey. "The Emperor himself responded to my letter of inquiry concerning the Captain—apparently he never authorized a background investigation for Tai Lung."

They all reacted in unison: "_What_?"

"I _knew_ it," Tigress growled, clenching her fists. "I _knew_ it was a sham!"

"What else did His Excellency say?" Crane asked.

"Very little," said the red panda, accepting the scroll back from Monkey, rolled it up and placed it back in his sleeve. "We are to keep him posted, but the impression I got is that what Captain Zang Deshi is doing is most certainly _not_ authorized by the Imperial government. What _is_ certain is that he is not interested in Tai Lung's well-being." The red panda nodded at Crane. "Take to the skies, and report back to us if and when they leave. I'll alert the magistrate of their activities and ask he employ some form of guard around the village. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for any suspicious activity. You're all dismissed."

Once the warriors had parted ways, Mr. Ping finally put down his knife with a heavy sigh. Dalang and Su Lin both let out their own relieved sighs and turned to get back to work. But Ping quickly realized with alarm that he was not the only one shaking. Sonam had gone completely silent and still, and his scarred face had paled considerably.

Ping looked up with concern at his friend's face. "Sonam, what is wrong? You are as pale as a ghost!"

The snow leopard swallowed hard as his heart raced. He whispered, "Ping…I think I've signed my son's death warrant." After a long pause, which neither elder knew what to say, Sonam guiltily asked him, "What do I tell Mei Xing?"

Ping sighed and shook his head sorrowfully. "For now...say nothing more than that Captain Zang has left. And if I were you," the goose said with a firm look at the snow leopard, "I would keep my head down. For heaven's sake—and for your son's—don't do _anything_ I would not!"

* * *

Closing time came early that day; Ping felt there had been too much "excitement" to warrant keeping the restaurant open much longer…which of course was code for needing a drink to take the edge off a very nerve-wracking day. Besides, the place was all but deserted anyhow by sundown. Tigress was helping close up for the night, sweeping up the courtyard when she felt a presence behind her. Reacting the only way she knew how, she twirled the broom in her hand and whirled about, bringing the staff down on the unsuspecting trespasser's head—

—only for her to realize that her trespasser was a teenage tiger. "Um…sorry?" she offered by way of an apology, albeit not a very convincing one.

Hu Quon gingerly rubbed his head and he picked himself up off the floor. "No, _ow_, I should've known better than to sneak up on you…_oww_…"

Inwardly relieved that she had not seriously injured the cadet, Tigress crossed her arms and asked, "What are you doing here, Cadet?"

Quon held up his hands in a calming fashion. "Please, Master Tigress, ma'am, hear me out—I wanted to apologize for my superior's conduct…"

"If your superior can't be bothered to humble himself to us, then I won't accept any apology from one of his lackies." Tigress bit her tongue when she saw the look crossing the youth's face. "Please, forgive me," she said hastily. "I am not mad at you."

"No, ma'am, I understand. I'm small. I'm an easy target."

"No, that's not what I meant—I'm mad at your commanding officer, and it's wrong of me to take it out on you."

Quon gave her a half-hearted smile, "I really do appreciate you think so well of me that you apologized, but I'm not really anyone of consequence. I'm smaller than the average tiger; I've gotten used to being the whipping boy."

Okay, now she felt _really_ bad for hitting him. "How old are you?"

"Sixteen, ma'am," he answered with a slight blush.

Gods, he _was_ just a kid. And now Tigress felt particularly bad for losing her temper at him…even worse for hitting him. With someone as volatile as Zang for a mentor, Quon had to be on the receiving end of such tempers all the time…something he certainly didn't deserve. And without said bad influence around him, the tiger youth seemed genuinely sweet and kind, if maybe a bit naïve, and certainly still at that stage where he was searching for purpose and for acceptance from others. "You're not done growing, yet," she said. "Have hope; you may be as big as an Amur Tiger when you're older."

"I'll never be _that_ big," Quon said sullenly. "South China tigers just can't compare in size to…well, to tigers like your husband."

Tigress smirked, setting the broom aside. "And yet _I_ am the strongest, and the one who wears the pants in this family."

Quon stared at her in shock. "_You_? But you're…"

"A woman?" she finished for him.

He pressed his ears flat against his head. "I mean no offense, ma'am."

"I believe you," she said sincerely. "But I think you should be spending less time with your commanding officer."

Quon looked around, then over his shoulder, before lowering his tone and telling her, "I hope you know, ma'am, that while he _is_ my commanding officer, I don't share all of Captain Zang's beliefs."

She smiled and nodded. "There's hope for you yet…Quon, right?"

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am, that's right."

"Where did you say you were from?"

"Guangzhou; my mother and grandmother raised me."

"What about your father?"

He shrugged. "I never saw him; he sent money, sure, but he just wasn't there, you know? That doesn't mean I don't honor him, because I do—but it's hard to love someone who puts business before family."

Tigress frowned, thinking back to her parents' ancestor tablet and all the memories involved. "I know how that feels." And she did. Her biological father was a migrant worker, and while he had to do what he did to provide for his family, Tigress couldn't adequately honor him because…well, she knew absolutely nothing about him. She didn't know his favorite foods, or favorite color, hell, she didn't even know how old he was when he married her mother! While the money helped pay for food and the roof over their heads, Tigress remembered, even as a little girl, watching with envy as other little girls ran smiling and giggling into their fathers' arms and wondered why she couldn't have that. After her mother died and she had been adopted by Shifu, Tigress still envied those girls, even as they were married off at young ages—their fathers still loved them, but Shifu had never shown any affection like that. And now another South China tiger, just like her, stood before her, a tiger who knew exactly how it felt to always be kept at arm's length by a non-existent father.

After a pause, she asked, "Why did you enter the academy?"

Now he smiled, and she saw something familiar there, a light in those youthful eyes she remembered, just barely, from a memory as dim as a star's light. But his smile was a sad one, yet carried with it an undercurrent of hope. "Well, it was a great opportunity that fell on our doorstep! Even if it didn't seem so great at first…see, one day, when I was thirteen, the money just stopped coming. We didn't know what happened—I don't know if my father had died, or just decided to settle down somewhere and forget about us. I got a recommendation and joined the academy so I could provide for my family; someone needed to take care of Mom and Granny, and, well ma'am, I _was_ the man of the house."

"They pay you?"

His cheeks reddened a bit. "Not a lot, but whatever I get, I send home. I hope to be an officer someday, and be a man my mom and granny can be proud of."

Tigress smiled. "I'd say you're on the right track, young man."

He blushed and smiled bashfully, "I'm much obliged, Master Tigress, ma'am. Thank you."

"No, thank _you_," she said with heavy meaning. "Believe me, Quon, I appreciate that you came by. But bear in mind that if your captain, or any of the others had come here asking for forgiveness, they wouldn't have gotten it."

"I don't speak for all of them, but they mean no harm. I know they insulted your friends, but…"

"But you're worried that Tai Lung isn't completely reformed."

He looked at her, shame-faced. "I don't know him; anything you have to say about him—"

"I will only say this much," she said, pausing to collect her thoughts, and to find the right words to say. "I don't like the man. I just don't. I have personal reasons for not liking him, and I hope you'll forgive me for not disclosing them."

"I would never ask such a thing—it's your business, not mine, or anyone else's."

"Thank you. But just because I don't like him doesn't mean I don't respect him. He has done terrible things, yes, _but_—and I grudgingly admit this—he is still a good man, a good husband to Mei Xing, and, when the time comes, I have a good feeling he'll be a good father, too."

Quon paused, visibly thinking it over, then responded, "This coming from someone who doesn't even like him…that says something."

Tigress smiled. "Tell that to your comrades. They may or may not listen, but it's something."

Quon smiled back. "It most certainly is, ma'am. I wish you the best. Now, um, if you'll forgive my rudeness…"

She understood, nodded, and pointed out the door. "Take a left at the end of the street, then the second right, follow that road to the end, and that'll put you at the main gate. Good luck, Cadet, and stay safe."

He low bowed in respect to her—something none of the other soldiers had ever done—and quickly retreated to meet up with his superiors. He wasn't such a bad sort, she thought. He could have been worse. It helped, she knew, to know that he only entered the military to provide for his family. She respected that; she was sure Dalang would respect that, too. And as she escaped up the stairs to wash up for dinner, Tigress reached a conclusion that she could believe with great earnestness: that Cadet Hu Quon was utterly incapable of lying.

* * *

Monkey placed a tile down onto the game board and picked one up, placing it in a pile by his elbow. Mantis rubbed his chin as he contemplated his options. The two had little else to do since Shifu had dismissed them earlier. Crane had gone off to tail the delinquent soldiers, whilst Viper and Tigress had gone out for a girls-only training afternoon. Which, of course, left the two bachelors to their own devices…and since the kitchen was off limits, they had settled in Mantis' room for a "friendly" game of mahjong.

"Damn, you're really beating the pants off me."

Monkey gave him an odd look. "But you don't wear any pants."

Mantis glanced up at him, then made his move. "…And that just made this game really creepy."

The simian's expression soured. "Thanks for ruining my already low opinion of you."

"Success!" Mantis laughed. "I didn't think it could get any lower!"

The two of them laughed as Monkey made his move. The door to the bunkhouse slammed open to allow a very tired and slightly disgruntled Crane into the building. Mantis called through his open door, "Welcome home, lover boy."

"Viper left hot pot noodle casserole in the oven," said Monkey.

"Yeah, great, thanks," the bird said as he took off his straw hat.

"Did they leave?" Monkey asked.

Crane ruffled his feathers once before folding his wings against his body. "Yeah, finally. Even though it was close to dusk, they started crossing the bridge."

"I hope they fall off," Mantis muttered, moving a mahjong piece across the board.

"Don't wish ill of other people," Monkey warned, "unless you want ill to happen to you."

"You know I don't care about that superstition," the insect said, mirroring his simian comrade in a decisive move. He flicked his antennae when he heard Crane sigh heavily. "What's up?"

"Po and Tai Lung don't know about any of this, _that's_ what's up," the bird said shortly. "I should've flown ahead, tried to warn them—"

"Wouldn't do any good," Mantis said. "They took the only map with them, and with winter comin' in, Viper would kill you if you left to fly to Tibet to find an unlisted temple."

"Do you think they made it there okay?" Monkey wondered, looking out the window at the dark sky.

"We just have to hope they did," Crane said, settling between them to watch their game. "Just wish there was more we could do to help them."

"Don't worry, I got that covered," Mantis said, triumphantly gaining the upper hand. As the simian groaned at the loss, the insect allowed himself a smug smile. "I told those soldiers fastest way to get to Tibet."

"You _WHAT_?" the other two males roared.

"Relax, relax," he said, holding up his pincers in a placating way. "I told them to take the Red Bird Pass."

"The what?" Monkey asked.

"Wait…" Crane haltingly said. "I _know_ that pass—" Then he gasped in horror. "Mantis, you _didn't_!"

"Didn't what?"

"_Mantis_," the bird snapped, "That pass is _dangerous_! No one in my clan even dares to _fly_ by there! The chance for mudslides and rockslides, bandits and highwaymen, not to mention the weather—there hasn't been a single record in the past century that said anyone survived the _entire_ pass from start to finish!"

Mantis thinly smiled. "Exactly."

Crane settled into horrified silence as he regarded his old friend in a new light. "How could you? You sent five men to their deaths, and you're sitting here playing mahjong like its _nothing_?"

"Crane," said Mantis, in a tone that left no room for interpretation. "I was a wandering warrior long before I joined this little team of ours. In that time, I fought with men like that. I fought _against_ men like that. Those men would follow Zang to the end of the world, and men like that are dangerous. I'm lucky I lived through those battles. You might think I'm a monster, but I'm glad to see the backs of their heads; the less men like that in the world, the better off we all are." He looked across the table at Monkey, who seemed to carry the same stony silence as his avian ally. Monkey, however, did not look as torn up about possibly losing Zang to a horrible demise courtesy of Mother Nature.

Crane just shook his head at them, speechless. "I don't know what to say."

"Don't say anything." The insect picked up a piece to move, but hesitated and thought over his choice. "Just keep in mind," he said as he set his piece down, "That if Zang doesn't have the 'Okay' from the Emperor…who's to say how he'd treat Po and Tai Lung if or when he finds them?"

"He wouldn't kill them," Crane said definitively.

Monkey made a face. "I am not so sure…he seemed dead-set on seeing Tai Lung suffer."

"Having met Vachir, though, years ago," Mantis said. "Well…I don't wish what happened to him on my worst enemy, and I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead but…the guy was a prick."

"But nobody deserves what he got."

The insect shrugged. "Depends on who you ask."

Crane stared at him. "You don't think Tai Lung would actually…?"

Mantis and Monkey shared a look, then quickly looked back at their game. Crane caught the glance. "…He wouldn't. No, he went down a dark path before, but he's…"

"Crane," Monkey sharply interrupted, then lowered his voice and whispered, "This doesn't leave this room."

"Are you sure we should—" Mantis started to ask before Monkey cut him off.

"Shh! We might as well." The simian looked at Crane and said, "After the Jiao War, me and Mantis helped treat Tai Lung's wounds. On his arms and legs, he had a bunch of scars. Real bad scars. Old scars."

Crane narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "How come I've never seen—?"

"His fur's too thick to see them, unless you're really looking," Mantis explained, though every word was forced, as if he truly didn't want to say anything. "I was looking for acupuncture nerve points on his arm for pain relief, and that's how I found the first ones. Older ones looked like lash marks, some of the newer ones looked like he'd been stabbed or cut a couple times, by small instruments…but its hard to tell."

Crane stared at the two of them in horror. Whipping was one thing, but stabbing and cutting? "Are you saying what I think you are?"

"Shifu's training might be insane in anyone's eyes," Mantis said, shaking his head, "But there is no way Tai's training could have caused those scars."

"You think he was tortured? While in prison?"

"Where else would it've happened?" Monkey asked. "Looking at those scars, looks like Commander Vachir really didn't like him. Sure, Tai Lung did bad things…but if it was _me_, and not him…" the primate looked exceedingly guilty, "I would probably want to kill the Commander, too."

Crane was dumbstruck, and looked between them. "Does Shifu know? Or Viper, or Tigress? Or…_anyone_?"

"That's the thing," Mantis said with a helpless shrug. "We don't know. I don't know if Tai knows we know. We don't know how bad it was, and…" he hesitated. "Honestly? If he doesn't want to talk about it, I don't blame him. He'll talk about it when he's ready."

"But…but I don't understand it," the bird said, still reeling. "Why would he keep something like that a secret?"

Mantis shrugged. "Maybe he was raped?"

Monkey made a disgusted noise, picked up his next game piece and said, "Okay, one, that is a totally over-used cliché; not everyone gets raped in prison. And two, those guards would've been too scared of him to try it anyway."

"Be probably near impossible, too," Crane said. "You ever see the drawings of that device that kept him immobile? The thing covered half of his whole body. If…_that_ were even possible…there'd have to be some pretty creative ways to—you know what, I'm not going to think about it. It's too ridiculous anyhow."

"C'mon, guys, he was in prison for twenty stinkin' years," Mantis said. "There had to be _something_ goin' on."

"Like torturous beatings?" Monkey posited as he made his next move.

Mantis countered both the game move and his argument. "He wouldn't have been so savage about killing them if it was _just_ beatings—I think we all know that."

"No, it's just you," Crane said. "And we don't even know that he actually _was_ tortured by the Anvil of Heaven. Whatever proof of that died with Vachir, and Tai Lung's obviously not talking." He yawned and cracked his shoulders. "I'm going to bed; don't stay up too late."

Unfortunately for Crane, sleep wasn't exactly forthcoming. His conversation with his two friends kept running over and over again in his head, and slowly, his mind filled with doubt. Even as he tried to dismiss it, the idea kept coming back to him. Was it possible? Had he really been…?

"Honey, are you still awake?"

Crane shook himself awake and noticed Viper watching him in the dim light of their dark room. He sighed and settled back onto the bed. "Sorry, sweetie, I just have a lot on my mind."

"Tai Lung, you mean?"

Gods, was she ever right! "Yeah."

"I'm sure he'll be fine," she said, coiling up next to him. "Besides, he's got Po with him."

"Yeah."

"Okay, you seem really distracted."

"It's a lot of things, Viper." He looked over at her, "Its Po's vision, and their being an empire away while we're preparing for Heaven-knows-what, and now there's some sadistic freak out to get Tai Lung…and maybe Mei Xing, too. This whole thing bothers me." He sighed and sourly muttered, "Maybe I should've pushed them off the bridge…"

"Crane!" she gasped. "How could you say—why on earth would you say something like that?"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…just thinking about what Monkey, Mantis and I were talking about earl—" He stopped, and inwardly cursed himself. He'd said too much, he knew it.

"About what?"

"What?"

"What were you talking about?"

"We were…" Should he tell her? Would there be any harm…? "We think Tai Lung might've been tortured…while in prison." When she didn't immediately respond, he continued, "But you can't tell—"

"Are you out of your _damn mind_?" she nearly shrieked. "This cracks the case wide open! Do you think the Emperor would—"

"He _wouldn't_ because there's no proof that it actually happened," Crane said.

"So what makes you think that?"

"Mantis said he found scars on Tai Lung's arms and legs, scars that looked like lash marks…like from a whip or a flail. And Monkey found scars that looked like cuts and stab wounds…"

Viper said, brokering no argument, "We have to tell Shifu."

"And what if we're wrong?"

"He's our _friend_, Crane; there's got to be something…"

"Tai Lung doesn't know that we suspect that, though. We could be way off—he could've gotten those scars from another battle before prison."

"But if it was torture—"

"He would have to be the one to tell us."

"Doesn't he trust us enough to tell us?"

"If it were me, and if I were tortured for twenty years…I'd find it hard to trust anybody."

Viper fell silent, and Crane could tell that his wife was severely bothered by this conversation. The avian sighed heavily and pulled the serpent into his wings. "Look, I'm not completely refuting it, but I'm not saying it's true, either. If it did happen, it's up to Tai Lung to tell us."

"But why would he keep it from us?" she asked fretfully. "He's our friend. Doesn't he trust us?"

Any other day, Crane would have answered "yes, of course he does". But this whole topic had him wondering if that were actually the case. He wanted to say that the snow leopard trusted Po, but what if he was wrong? In fact, was it entirely possible that he trusted anyone at all?

* * *

Just because he was no longer an omega did not mean that Lang had let his guard down. Lan Duo's offer for training in pole arms was…suspicious, but welcome. Bao Nu suddenly offering pointers on weight training and throwing punches made him wary, but he was aware that this knowledge could be a boon to him. But suddenly Yu Wang offered to teach him effective assassination techniques, and Tan Lan offered to teach him stealth, and Xu Jiu wanted to show him the finer points of his style (which, Lang thought, was odd because he had never seen the latter fight; he was usually eating all the time). Zi Hao still hated him, but at least he knew where the black wolf stood. The others…well, Lang was finding that he and Koshchei shared a lot of the same beliefs.

He had told him so when Koshchei brought up Bao Nu's offer to him. "I don't trust him either," he'd said. "Something doesn't smell right."

"I am glad to know this," the Amur leopard had told him with a straight face and a serious tone. "We must not be letting these volfs pull vool ova eyes, yes?"

Ironically, a wolf in sheep's clothing was exactly what worried him. These same men had terrorized him and placed bets on when and how he'd end up dead; the chances of them suddenly liking him were about as likely as a turtle winning a foot race against a rabbit. But he had joked at the time, "I bet the others will start offering services too. Once Hao offers help, then I know I'll be in trouble."

Now, by his own estimation, he was in _deep_ trouble. Five of the six were now on his side—or so he hoped—and once Zi Hao made the jump, a coup was certain. And they expected him to fall for it. They expected him to trust them. _Bull shit, after the way they treated me? Not even Duo's given me reason to trust him._

Koshchei was of the same mind. Of what little he spoke with the leopard, the wolf youth knew he had to think fast on his feet, and think faster than any of them. He wasn't the smartest of wolves, but he figured if he played the part of a naïve and overly trusting pup, he could pull the wool over _their_ eyes instead.

That was when he thought of a rather brilliant plan. Low self-esteem told him it wasn't a brilliant plan, but that would quickly change.

Well into the middle of Shaanxi, Lang conferred with Koshchei a little idea that had been gestating for a few days:

"Our odds kinda suck right now."

"Explain," the leopard said.

"Well, I was just thinking that there's only eight of us against two schools-full of kung fu students," he shrugged nonchalantly, "male and female, not to mention the Furious Five, the Dragon Warrior, Tai Lung…yeah, a lotta warriors. Not good odds on a good day, right?" The scrawny wolf noticed that Koshchei wasn't the only one paying attention: the Half Dozen had also perked their ears. Clearly they had been thinking along the same lines.

"So," Lang continued, "We need reinforcements. Eight of us against a village-full of warriors…means we need a village-full, too."

"You mean an army," Koshchei said. "Ve haff little time to pull together army."

Lang shrugged. "Maybe. But I heard of an inn not too far from here, where a bunch of unsavory types go. We don't have to tell them about the Five or anything, but say we know a way to get into the Valley and plunder it. You want Dalang, we want the Dragon Warrior…those schmucks can be a decoy to get them isolated."

Koshchei abruptly stopped, his jaw hanging open. Lang swallowed hard, thinking he had overstepped his rather unclear boundaries. But the leopard surprised him when he looked at the wolf, grinned and said, "…Brilliant. Yes, yes is brilliant! Vhy did not I think of it? Yes, ve go to inn! Ve get army as decoy!" He took Lang by the shoulders and kissed both cheeks before ruffling the fur on his head. "Brilliant _malchik_! _Brilliant_! Am so proud!"

Lang allowed himself a smile. He'd done something right? Seeing the wide, luminous smile on the old leopard's face, the young wolf grinned. He'd done something right! And he could have sworn he was seeing things, but it looked like Lan Duo had a proud smile on his face, too.

It took them another day to reach the inn Lang had mentioned. Yu Wang had told Koshchei it was his old stomping grounds, and that, if necessary, he could do the negotiations. Now, Yu Wang was a smooth son-of-a-bitch—literally—who almost always got what he wanted. He was slighter and slimmer than most wolves, but this served his purpose as an assassin; he could get in and get out of a sticky situation as slippery as an eel in mud. Unlike the other wolves in the sextet, he was also a lighter shade of grey, almost white, which lent him a rather regal appearance, and he used this to his advantage when gaining his victims' trust.

His extended offer to help Lang, in fact, had nothing to do with any form of respect for the former omega. The impression he got from Duo was pretty reasonable: get on the kid's good side, and get on the leopard's good side. Kiss up to the "pack leader", and get a bigger share of the kill. That's how their ancient ancestors did it, that's how their parents did it, and by the gods that how his generation did it…and it had worked pretty well so far.

Though he doubted Lang had a single deceitful bone in his body, he knew Bao Nu wasn't kidding when he said the potential was there. Deceit was learned, not instinctual. The only time he'd been out-foxed—for lack of better phrase—was the day he had met Tan Lan.

Tan Lan was a rather small wolf, clearly from the low lands, and possibly had some Mongolian in him. He lacked the finesse Yu Wang had inherited, but he made up for lack of skill in killing for a veritable cornucopia of connections, both social and financial. Unlike Yu Wang, who had come from a family of assassins (it was family lore that his own mother, an hour after having given birth to her only son, had wrapped him in swaddling clothes, strapped him to her back, and then assassinated a dozen men in the same night), Tan Lan was a mercenary first, assassin next. The last warlord he'd worked for had—ironically—been assassinated by Yu Wang himself. For someone who had just lost his livelihood, Tan Lan was remarkably cool about it. In fact, he had bowed to Wang to acknowledge his skill. And then he stabbed him. The little bastard.

Ah, but the best partnerships were often founded on rather rocky footing, and Lan proved to be an excellent partner. Wang was surprised to find that many of his new partner's connections were within his own family. There wasn't a single warlord who had never received at least a calling card from Tan Lan. Except Jiao Shen, of course. Most importantly for a mercenary, their names had gotten around. This troubled Wang, being from a family that prided privacy above all other virtues, but Lan loved it; Wang supposed he shouldn't have complained too much, after all, it was how they'd ended up working for White Wolf.

Now however they were back at his old stomping grounds, and Yu Wang was in his element. His family was notorious around here, and carried more influence than the governor. As soon as he walked in, people recognized him. But while Yu Wang mingled and introduced the other wolves to old acquaintances, Asmodei Koshchei took advantage of his one chance to put Lang's plan in motion.

Koshchei meandered through the crowded main hall and up to the bar next to a surly-looking crocodile. The leopard ordered a drink, and as he waited, he smirked at the croc. "Going south for vinter, yes?"

The croc eyed him carefully, then responded with a growling voice, "Yeah. Sounds like you're doin' the same, old man. Northern winters that bad?"

"Ach, I am old man, and cold is…eh, not so good for old bones, _da_?" Koshchei joked. "You see me and volfs back dere," he said, thumbing over his shoulder at Lang and the Half Dozen. "They come vit me; to travel alone is not smart—and Gansu is not so much good place in vinter."

"You ain't lyin'; ain't a good place any time of the year," the croc said dismally. "But I ain't stupid enough to go real far south."

"Vhy is that, friend?" the leopard asked.

"C'mon, Old-timer, haven't you heard of the Furious Five?"

Koshchei's eyes brightened and a wide, cruel smile slowly grew on his lips. Suddenly, he decided an addendum to Lang's plan would work in his favor… "You are, as they say, _enemy_ of Five?"

"I hope they rot in hell," the croc swore. "_Especially_ Mantis."

Koshchei had a hard time hiding his glee at his sudden good luck. "Is interesting you mention Five…"

"Yeah, why's that?" the croc said suspiciously.

Koshchei only shrugged and picked inspected his black claws. "I have, eh, interesting proposition. Volfs and I go to Valley of Peace; I haff, eh…_business_ vit Jiao Dalang."

The croc gaped at him, then laughed nervously. "Good luck, Mac! You know he's married to Master Tigress, right? She'd kill you!"

"If I am alone, maybe. Vit large number…maybe not so much?" Koshchei paused, giving the croc a significant look. "You are seeing vhat I am meaning?"

The croc had gone still, staring flabbergasted at the leopard, then a similar cruel smile grew across his long face, exposing all his sharp teeth. "Yeah, I think I get what you're sayin'."

"Now only problem," the leopard said, calmly accepting his drink. "Is finding enough numbers to take Furious Five…and maybe Dragon Varrior…maybe Tai _Luung_; _maybe_ him, less. You know good place I find interested men?"

"I'll do ya one better, buddy." The croc brought his claws to his mouth and let out three sharp whistles. The other patrons ceased their chattering and looked in the croc's direction. Lang and the Half Dozen also turned to stare, and Lang felt the blood drain from his face; for some reason, he couldn't beat back the sense of impending doom. The reptile raised his voice and bellowed, "Who here's got a beef with the Furious Five? Raise yer hands, raise 'em high!"

Every single hand in that room shot up high into the air…except for the seven wolves in Koshchei's employ. They were lucky enough to have avoided such a fight thus far.

"Okay," the croc continued. "Who here wants _revenge_ on the Furious Five?"

Not a single hand was lowered…in fact, a few shot up even higher.

The croc pointed right at Koshchei. "You guys want revenge, talk to this guy. He's after Jiao Dalang—"

"And rest of Five up for grab," Koshchei shouted above him. "Leave Dalang for me—rest of them, is, how you say, 'open season'?"

The silence in the room evaporated into a cacophony of chairs scraping against the floor, and hundreds of pairs of feet and hooves making right towards the leopard.

Even Zi Hao was flabbergasted. He looked at the other six wolves, who looked back at him and each other with shock and awe. Yu Wang set his jaw but said nothing, though it hurt to think that a complete stranger to this land carried more flak than Wang's family name. Lang was the first one to say anything: "Wow…I guess they have more enemies than we thought."

"No shit," Bao Nu said. "There's gotta be at least a hundred there…"

"And if they leave and tell their buddies about his offer," Xu Jiu said, similarly in awe. "…Who knows how big that army will be?"

"No kidding," Lan Duo said. He lightly punched Lang's skinny shoulder. "Good call, kid."

"Yeah," Tan Lan nodded in agreement, "_Really_ good call."

Lang just shrugged, feeling the heat of Zi Hao's glare boring into his back like a pickax through stone. "It's not that big a deal…I just figured someone else should fight the Furious Five, and keep 'em busy so we can focus on other stuff…like looting and stuff."

"Good in my book," Tan Lan said with a shrug.

"That's good in anyone's book," a silky voice purred. The wolves all turned to the dark booth they had been standing in front of; none of them had noticed there was anyone in there, but now upon closer inspection…

Lang jumped and yelped when something grabbed his arm. He came face-to-face with sparkling blue eyes and a keen, sneaky grin that flashed snow-white fangs. "Hey, cutie," the blue-eyed female winked.

"Well, _hello_, ladies," Yu Wang smirked. "Why didn't you girls speak up sooner?"

"Oh, were you speaking to _us?_" the same silky voice said. The owner of said voice also sported uniquely garnet-red eyes and a smile as sly as her sister's. "We are not _girls_ by any stretch of the imagination, gentlemen."

"Oh, I believe it," the lustful wolf grinned, eyeing the oldest sister hungrily. "We're your names?"

Wu Tian sat forward and rested her chin in her palm. "I might ask you the same question, handsome. Are you with that old cat down there?" she asked, her red eyes flicking to the bar below.

"Maybe," Yu Wang said with an odd grin. "Are you interested in his offer?"

"Maybe," she said, the same furtive smile ghosting her lips. "But I don't sign up for anything until I know exactly what I'm getting into…or until I know what's getting into _me_, whatever the case may be."

The other wolves gaped at her turn of phrase, but Yu Wang was in his element. He smiled suggestively, leaning against the table and blatantly flirting (and making Lan Duo gag), "Is that a fact? What if I promised that you—and your lovely companions, of course—to all manner of riches, power, fame…?"

"Money and power are nice," the green-eyed Wu Jiang spoke up. "But a lot of people know who we are already."

"Perhaps, _madame_," Yu Wang smiled at her, "You would indulge my curiosity?"

The three snow leopardesses shared a look between them, then silently agreed to let Tian be their spokesperson. "I am Tian, and this is my sister Jiang, and my youngest sister, Zhu. If you haven't guessed already, we are the Wu Sisters."

"Whoa…" Lang gasped. "_The_ Wu Sisters?"

Tian's smile widened, and a light coloring on her cheeks told that she was actually flattered from the young wolf's attention…and yet she had shown no such affection towards Yu Wang. "So you _have_ heard of us. That's a Gansu accent, isn't it? I didn't know we were so famous there."

"Oh, you're _infamous_," Lang nodded. "Not even my old master would've crossed you!"

"How sweet," Tian smiled. "Are you someone's apprentice?"

Lang nodded and pointed down to the Amur leopard. "Him—he's been great, much nicer than anyone else I've known."

Tian noted that the other wolves had stiffened and firmly set their jaws, and the one black wolf looked to be a hairsbreadth away from physically attacking the youth. The rather amoral-looking one, especially, looked to be holding back on some strong words of his own. "How interesting. Tell me, is he offering any pay?"

"Uh, well…" Lang hesitated.

"So far," Tan Lan spoke up quickly, "All he's offering is the glory of defeating—and maybe killing—the Furious Five. And plunder from the Valley of Peace alone would be all the payment anyone needs."

"I am inclined to agree," Tian said. "As my sisters and I have some…_issues_ with Master Tigress, specifically."

"Well hey, that's great!" Lang said. "I mean, Koshchei wants to get Dal—"

"_Koshchei_?" Tian shrieked. Zhu gasped and Jiang started in alarm. "_Asmodei Koshchei_," Tian demanded. "_That_ is who you're working for?"

"Yeah, I know, he's got a reputation…" Lang said, holding up his hands in a placating manner, "But he's been nothing but nice to me. The only people he's ever hurt deserved it, and as long as you respect him, he's cool."

The three snow leopardesses stared incredulously at the young wolf. Then Tian put her hands on her sisters' shoulders. "Girls, conference." They immediately huddled and discussed. The seven male wolves stood back, giving each other questioning glances while the females deliberated. A couple times, Wu Jiang's voice rose up with an angry hiss, indicating her supreme displeasure. Wu Zhu's soft tones suggested she was worried, but perhaps also playing Devil's advocate. Wu Tian was mostly silent on the matter, listening to her sisters' comments, though it seemed that despite whatever misgivings they had, she had already made her decision.

"All right," she finally said. "We're game. But we'd like to meet our new boss, if you can arrange that," she said with a sweet smile at Lang. Lang nodded and turned to grab Koshchei, not noticing the venomous look Yu Wang was sending his way. The wolves all followed the youth to the floor where Koshchei was being mobbed by outlaws eager to take down their most reviled enemy.

"I hope you know what you're doing, sis," Jiang muttered.

"Trust me, girls," Tian whispered, keeping a wary eye on both Lang and his 'master'. "I've got a very good idea."

"But what about our orders?" Jiang asked. "Our boss won't be happy."

"_Hang_ our boss," Tian hissed. "This is too good of an opportunity."

"Our target is Zang Deshi, not Asmodei Koshchei, remember?" Jiang said as she glowered at her sister. "Even if he _is_ worth more dead than Zang is, I like having my hide where it is, and my money where _that_ is."

"Not to mention they're going after the Dragon Warrior!" Zhu fretfully whispered. "And Tai Lung! Sis, I _told_ you, we should've gone after them! We could've warned—"

"I am _not_ going to listen to this, Zhu!" Tian hissed back, feeling apologetic when her youngest sister flinched. "We _all_ know how we feel about those two, but this is our _chance_. And by the gods, I am not passing this up."

"At what cost?" Jiang asked. "Tian, not only are we going against direct orders, but if we join him, we're selling our souls to the devil, here."

"You know the stories as well as I do," Tian said, idly inspecting her claws. "All we need to do is find his 'egg' and destroy it."

"But to _join his army_?" Zhu squealed. "How is that going to help?"

"Zhu, _stop_!" Tian shushed. "Remember what Mother taught us. Keep your friends and family close…" and here her eyes flicked over to Koshchei, who felt her gaze and met it with his own cold, cruel blue stare. After a long, tense moment, where Tian felt the hairs rising on the back of her neck, Koshchei smiled warmly at her and waved, as if greeting a long-lost friend. Still feeling chills, Tian smiled and waved back. "…And keep your enemies even closer."

* * *

Captain Zang Deshi was not amused, nor pleased, nor any applicable synonyms thereof. As a matter of fact, he was absolutely livid. The war horse had not expected Tai Lung's family and friends (more to the point, he was rather surprised the snow leopard had _any_ friends) to be open with him, but he also had not expected the Valley's citizens to fully support the snow leopard, either. Every time he or one of his men had said anything remotely condescending about the Master of the Thousand Scrolls, they were either glared at, cursed at, or on one occasion asked to leave the establishment and never return. One citizen, a bull carpenter who had worked with Tai Lung in the Long and Feng restaurant's renovation, got so mad at Zang himself that the horse swore he would end up impaled on that bull's horns.

He couldn't understand it. He just could _not_ understand it. Why in Heaven's name would these people support and protect a cold-blooded murderer? Did his sins mean nothing to them? The black horse knew full well that the attention spans of most plebeians only extended as far as the next harvest, and he theorized that their memories were similarly lacking.

Being _personally_ kicked out of the Valley by Master Shifu and the Furious Five didn't help ease his temper, either. And he was well aware that Master Crane had followed them to the outskirts of the village; he bristled at the thought that he—he!—was being treated as a criminal! He, Zang Deshi, _Captain_ Zang Deshi, treated as a criminal! Had he not spent the last thirty years protecting China's borders? Had he not fought heroically at the Battle of the Black Cliffs? Had he not served his country and his emperor with an almost fanatical devotion? Had he not shown more devotion to his own comrades, rank, and ruler than his own family? _Well, say what you want,_ he stubbornly thought, _I know I've more honor in my left hoof than those people have in their whole bodies!_

They had crossed the Thread of Hope in record time, considering, and now they were back right where they started: in the middle of a dense pine forest; Zang had nothing on the snow leopard that he didn't already know, and what little he had learned (he had a lot of friends, and preferred his tea black) was of little to no use to him. He supposed he could have used Tai Lung's wife and unborn child as leverage, but seeing the vast support network the snow leopardess had stayed his hand; he didn't fancy going up against a literally furious quintet of kung fu warriors…or her father-in-law. Or Jiao Dalang, for that matter.

Snorting, he marched on at the head of the column, his men plodding along behind him in complete silence. They didn't need to say what was on their minds, they knew his plan hadn't worked. If anything, they had gained enemies instead of allies, and at a time like this, it was a fateful and perhaps deadly error. Liu and Gao kept their respectful silence and allowed their commanding officer to brood. Sergeant Kong and Cadet Hu had scouted ahead, but it was really an excuse to get away from the black horse's sour mood. He was fine with that; he didn't particularly want to see them anyway, especially the cadet.

Zang knew Quon had gone back to the restaurant, probably to apologize. The boy was spineless like that. Not entirely surprising, as he had been raised by women. If he was going to make it in the army, the boy had to grow a thick skin, and learn to stop apologizing. A real soldier didn't apologize for every little mistake. They weren't above the law—they _were_ the law, and no one apologized for the law.

He heard Liu hiss sharply through his teeth. He stopped and turned to look at the bay horse. The lieutenant was glancing around, and held his arm up to signal them. Zang felt his blood freeze in his veins. They had been followed, and they were being watched. With a curse, he realized too late what had happened.

He would later barely recall the next few heart-stopping minutes. There was a deep guttural braying, and a sharp warning shout, then two sickening thuds in the undergrowth. Then one last, final agonized cry before the thick forest around them fell into an oppressive silence. The next thing he knew he was running, running in the direction of the sounds, and had stopped short in a clearing…and what he saw would be engrained in his mind for the rest of his days.

Kong was dead. The gorilla lay on his back, his body still twitching, and though he still breathed, it was obvious from the gurgling and the gushing blood from his throat that he was as good as dead. His eyes, normally glassy and shallow anyway, were open but seeing nothing.

The horse's attention next found Quon, his body contorted in a gruesome position on the moss-covered rocks. The tiger's sword had been half-way unsheathed. He had tried to fight, both of them had, judging by the wounds on Kong's thick fingers. Zang almost missed Gao's proclamation, "Quon's still alive!"

Zang let out a breath just as Kong breathed his last. Liu had tried to stopper the blood without success, and for the first time Zang understood the cliché of 'efforts being in vain'.

He vaguely remembered giving orders to pitch a tent for the dead and wounded, and only barely remembered scanning the trees desperately for any sign of what had happened. All he found were his men's footprints and disturbed earth and broken rocks…and a bloody dagger in the underbrush. It was not one he recognized, which meant its make was private, not imperial issue; it was thin, sleek, and sharper than any army knife…an assassin's blade.

And now, hours later, Zang knelt in the tent between the prone bodies of his two lowest-ranking recruits. He was not happy in the slightest, but he wasn't angry; he felt…numb. He couldn't remember the last time a death had left him feeling this way. Liu had done all he could for Kong, using an old canvas tent as a funeral shroud. The cut on his throat had been far too deep for anything to save him. Quon, on the other hand, was stable. The worst he'd gotten was a nasty blow to the head, but even Liu, who was the resident medic, had to concede the boy wasn't out of the woods yet.

Zang looked back at the tiger youth and ran over the facts again in his head. Quon had been out cold ever since they had discovered him. His sword had been partially drawn. Whoever had done this had been too fast for even the quickest reflexes to react. Kong didn't have quick reflexes, but he had still put up a good fight.

The black warhorse glanced back at the shrouded body of the sergeant and shook his head in woe. There weren't any footprints but for Kong's and Quon's, he reminded himself; whoever had attacked his men had done so from the air, perhaps the trees. It was assassin's work, that much was certain. Deep in his gut, the horse knew that the Wu Sisters and their ilk were not too far away from their current position. He conceded that he had not been as discrete as he could have been, and the results of that lay dead and wounded on either side of him.

He nearly jumped when Quon let out a low groan, the youth's face twisting into an agonized grimace. Zang moved a little closer to the boy and whispered his name, mindful that head injuries might make him more sensitive to light and sound:

"Quon, if you can hear me, answer me."

The tiger winced and rolled his head to the side. After another groan, he weakly replied. "Hi, Captain."

"Praise the gods," Zang said, visibly relieved. "Do you know where you are?"

"The…trail, somewhere?" he guessed. "Something happened, sir. Sergeant—"

Zang sighed. "The sergeant is dead, Quon. You were both attacked. Did you see who did it?"

"Attacked?" the youth asked, struggling to open his eyes. "H-How? I…I thought the sergeant had—"

"Had what?" Zang asked. Quon didn't immediately answer him. "Had _what_, Cadet?"

"I…" Quon paused, and turned his face away, ashamed, "We were arguing…and I said something I regret. I thought he hit me for being disrespectful… He's dead? How?"

"That's not important," Zang said. "But I want to be clear: you never saw who hit you?"

"Sir, I thought it was the sergeant. How did he die? We were alone—"

"Evidently, that's not true," the horse said as he looked back at the gorilla's covered body. He looked back when he heard a sniff. Quon had opened his eyes and was looking away, his face wan. Zang instinctively knew what was wrong. "There was nothing you could have done. If your attacker had been fast enough to beat _your_ reflexes, you wouldn't have stood a chance; none of us would have. You're lucky to be alive."

"But he's dead because of me, sir," Quon said, his voice croaking with emotion. "It's my fault. If I wasn't arguing, I would've heard—"

"This is _not_ your fault, Cadet. This could have happened to more seasoned soldiers." He rested his hand on the tiger's shoulder. "Cadet, effective immediately, I _order_ you to stop blaming yourself for Sergeant Kong's death. His passing was unfortunate, but not unexpected. We are in a dangerous time and a dangerous territory. For now, rest, get your strength back. The lieutenant will bring you something to eat."

"I'm not hungry, sir," the tiger dismally said.

"You're confusing that with a request. Don't do that again." With that, Zang crawled out of the tent and closed the flaps behind him to allow the tiger some peace. Rubbing his tired eyes, he sat at the fire Gao had made. Warming himself against the flames, the warhorse addressed the remaining officers. "We need to find a safer place to make camp. It's too open here."

"There's that inn we stayed at not too far from the Thread of Hope," Liu offered. "I can get medicine there much more readily. The cadet might recover faster in a better bed."

Gao snorted, offering weak tea to his commanding officer. "He won't do that—the kid's physically weak, but he's stubborn; he won't like us showing him any favoritism."

"Too bad," Zang said. He nodded at Liu, "We'll go to the inn. I need to write to the widow, and to send word to an associate of mine in Yunnan. We won't be able to get Tai Lung in Tibet, but we still have allies."

"You sure that's a good idea?" Gao said. "You told us not to trust anyone outside our group."

"Yes, but as you can plainly see," the black horse sneered, "Our numbers have gotten smaller, of late. We haven't been as discrete as we should, and a large part of that is my fault. We need to step back, let someone else dirty their hands."

"Or flush them out," Liu said. "I interviewed Master Shifu—he didn't tell me a whole lot, just showed me the artifacts in that Sacred Hall place…and one of those paintings gave me an idea, if you're open to ideas, sir."

"At this point, I have little choice. Proceed."

The chestnut bay outlined his plan: "See, there was this kung fu guy, Master Frog, who developed a form of fighting that didn't involve offense at all."

"How the hell does that work?" Gao wondered. "There's _always_ an aggressor."

"—But it isn't _him_. The whole premise is to 'let the fly come to you'. Frogs lie on lily pads and catch the flies as they come to them. Pretty lazy, I admit, but it works. Master Frog was the most successful—and longest lived—kung fu master in history, after Oogway of course."

Zang's expression brightened, and a smile slowly grew on his thin lips. "Of course…the frog is a hunter, but rather than chase the prey, he lures it in…just like a spider lures in a fly…and gentlemen, that's exactly what we'll do." He stared into the flames, seeing his plan unfolding in his mind's eye.

Capturing Tai Lung was now a certainty. What could possibly go wrong?

* * *

"What could go wrong, he says…"

"Shut up."

"What's the worst that could happen, he says…"

"Screw you."

"You wish, Baby Bear."

"Not cool, dude."

"Oh cheer up. This is just the _perfect_ blackmail!"

"You wouldn't dare."

"What? I wouldn't dare tell everyone we know just how brilliantly your plan backfired? And you've known me for _how_ long?"

Po finally tore himself away from the wall and the hidden door slammed shut behind him. Flustered, he shook out his robes and glared into the darkness. "Give me some slack, I don't think well on an empty stomach."

"Oh boohoo, cry me a river, panda."

"Tai, when I get my hands on you, I swear I'll—where _are_ you, anyway?"

"I'm right here."

"What, here?"

"No, not there."

"Then where?"

"You're the one who's supposed to see light in the darkest cave; you tell me."

"Prick."

"Yes I am. Idiot."

"How am _I_ an idiot?"

"Whose bright idea was it to leave the candle on the _other side of the wall_?"

"How does Mei Xing put up with you?"

"Oh, that's cold."

Po sighed and leaned back against the hidden door. "Great. So we're stuck here."

"What d'you mean we're _stuck_?" Tai Lung grilled. "I thought you said you had this under control."

"I did, until the door closed all the way."

The darkness fell oppressively silent, and Po ached to hear Tai Lung's breathing, but strangely, that wasn't what he heard. Not at first, anyway.

"Are you _fucking_ kidding me?" the snow leopard hissed.

"Three _jiao_," Po tallied.

"That's as far as your plan _went_? What the hell are we supposed to do, Po?"

"Willya gimme a minute? I'm thinking."

"You could have done that _before_ you decided using your body to stop a solid slab of rock. Brilliant plan, absolutely genius!"

"Hey, some of the best minds had the most scatterbrained appearances. Look at Master Oogway!"

"One, Oogway is in a category all his own, and two, you are in no way _anything_ like him, so there is no good to compare. And now, by the way, you've gone and broken your ribs again, I'm sure."

"Actually, I'm feelin' okay. But I know I can just come to you now—"

"Oh no. Not a snowball's chance in Hell. I've no problem healing accidents, but you brought that upon yourself. You can suffer for your own stupidity."

"What? Don't you want to touch my body? My sexy, sexy body? Do you think I'm sexy, Tai?"

"Panda, if I could see you, I would kill you on principle, and there is not a judge or jury in the world that would convict me."

"Did you hear that?"

"Oh forget it, I'm not falling for it."

"No, seriously, listen."

The darkness fell into silence again, and both ursine and feline strained their ears to listen. Po had heard something, and it sounded like singing, coming from down the corridor before them. And now Tai Lung heard it too. Po heard shuffling, the flapping of robes, and felt a whoosh of air as Tai Lung brushed past him in the pitch-black.

The snow leopard blindly felt along the smoothed walls, slipping here and there on damp stones, but he heard the singing quite clearly. Movement behind him told him that Po was closely following. The further they moved down the corridor, the louder the singing got. It was sweet, melodious, like a flute's notes wafting on the wind in rising and falling inflections. The further they moved, the closer they got, the more the singing sounded…avian to Tai Lung's ears; but what was a song bird doing inside a mountain?

Sooner than they expected, they saw a light up ahead, flickering against the walls. A literal light at the end of the tunnel. They moved closer, and the singing got louder and louder. The melody was in a language neither of them knew, and was too beautiful for words. All they knew was feelings: the song made them feel at once blissfully happy and simultaneously depressed. Despite himself, the snow leopard felt tears stinging his eyes.

They were about to round the corner and find out the identity of the singer. Tai Lung looked back to Po, who was just as entranced. Together, they rounded the corner—

"What the—?"

And stopped dead to find not only a shaft of moonlight raining down from a skylight above their heads, but a massive door to an unknown chamber. The chamber door was easily eight feet long and twelve feet high, and was gilt in gold and what appeared to be garnets and rubies. The precious and semi-precious stones formed a mosaic that had been inlaid in the gold of a magnificent bird with outstretched wings…the same bird they saw painted on the monastery's gate.

Even before they said anything, or moved closer to get a better look, both warriors knew exactly what they were looking at.

"The tomb," Tai Lung breathed. "The Phoenix Warrior's tomb…it has to be!"

Po gawked at the size of the door, and an unmentionable feeling fell over him. He nudged his friend and whispered, "So…what do we do?"

"How do you mean?" he whispered back.

"Well," the panda said, "If this is his tomb, we can't just open it. I mean, I don't want to disturb his final resting place, do you?"

"Yes I do."

"Yes you—_what_?"

Tai Lung pointed to the door. "All the answers I'm looking for have to be behind that door. I'm so close now, Po, I can smell it!"

"You sure it's not a decaying body that you smell?"

"Look who's sucking out the fun _now_, eh?"

"Tai, I'm not going to desecrate some guy's final resting place."

"You don't have to; I will."

"What if its booby trapped? You have a wife and kid to go home to—don't risk it."

Tai Lung stared back at the door, briefly illuminated by the moonlit shaft coming from the ceiling…and stared harder when he heard something. He took a step closer, and the sounds—the same singing that had drawn him here—grew louder and louder. And from behind the door—he swore, but wasn't sure if he could believe—there was a light, yellow-orange, framing the massive gold and red portal. The flickering light grew stronger, and brighter, and the singing got louder, and louder—

Tai Lung reached his hand out to touch the door. The light behind the cracks in the door grew ever brighter, and the singing rose to a feverish pitch—

Everything fell silent and dark the moment his fingers touched the jeweled bird's wing. But more to their astonishment…the door _moved._

Both warriors jumped back in alarm, gawking as the gilt portal swung inward, as easily as if on well-oiled hinges, with only a minor creaking that echoed down the cavern. Directly inside the door was a single candle set on a wall sconce, somehow flickering in whatever breeze had been afforded to it.

"Tell me I didn't imagine all that?" Tai Lung whispered to Po.

"You mean the freaky light and weird singing suddenly stopping when you touched a huge door that just swung open like no one's business?"

"Yes, that."

A moment longer, they waited, sniffing the air and finding to their great astonishment that there was no hint of decay normally associated with crypts. In fact, the air smelled…sweet, like spring flowers. But the sweetness only masked the stagnancy of old dried paint and chalky dustiness of chiseled stone. Tai Lung crept forward and stood under the candle, peering into the dark shaft ahead of them.

"Do you know what my instincts tell me?" he asked.

"Probably not 'lets get the heck outta here'."

"Right on one."

"Tai, I'm not going into some old dead guy's tomb."

"Po, the man's been dead longer than our family lines have probably existed. He's had to have been reborn by now, and all that's left has to be dust."

"So we run the risk of breathing in dead-guy dust. Not cool."

"Where's that sense of adventure you were so keen on earlier?"

"Kinda got knocked outta me when a wall crushed my ribcage."

Tai Lung turned and glared at him. "This was _your_ idea. And this," he said, pointing into the dark crypt, "holds the key to my destiny. Anything I can learn about my predecessor is all in there. I have spent the past four decades stumbling along through my life without any real direction, and now that I have a chance to _find_ that direction, I'm not passing it up!"

The snow leopard pointed at the panda, "Look at you! You didn't even know you wanted to be the Dragon Warrior and yet here you are! You've accomplished more than I ever could have by your age—"

"I haven't mastered all the scrolls, though."

"_Hang_ the scrolls! Even without mastering all the scrolls, you are a far better warrior than I'll _ever_ be! You heard what Sun Bear told you—you know kung fu as an art. He was right; I never learned of it as an art, and that's why I keep failing. Don't you get it, Po? I'm tired of failing, and I don't want to fail anymore."

Silence fell between them until Po cleared his throat. "Why don't we go in and see what we can find?"

Tai Lung smiled, waited until Po had joined him on the other side of the doorway, then took the candle from the sconce. They both froze, waiting for something to happen, but after a few tense minutes…nothing. The door was still wide open, the moonlight still filtered down from the natural skylight, and dust settled around them. Once certain that they did not face certain death from simply removing a candle from a holder, the pair continued down the corridor to the burial crypt.

The hall was rather short as far as tombs were concerned, but the panda and snow leopard could only imagine how difficult it was to chisel through this solid rock—the builders probably gave up after only a few feet. And sure enough, they came upon a second door, this one smaller, but no less magnificent, than the first. This door, too, was cracked open, leading both of them—especially Tai Lung—to despair. But it didn't make sense; why and how could tomb robbers get down here and plunder it?

But when he pushed open the door and raised the candle up to see inside, both he and Po sucked in a sharp breath at what they saw.

The antechamber was also the burial chamber, and before them in the middle of the rather small room was a large red marble sarcophagus sitting atop an altar carved with ornate markings and words in a script long extinct. The sarcophagus itself gleamed in the candlelight, shining as if it had just been polished. But most surprising was that the lid was completely off the crypt, and, upon closer inspection…the tomb was empty. Absolutely empty.

It felt to Tai Lung like he had been hit in the stomach. There was nothing here. Nothing. No burial artifacts, no books, no scrolls, no offerings, and not even a body! In fact, the way the sarcophagus' lid was leaning against the stone coffin suggested that it had been waiting there for its eternal contents for well over a millennium, and had never been used.

The Phoenix Warrior had not been buried here, and had probably _never_ been here.

And the snow leopard felt—if possible—a greater sense of loss than when he had been denied the Dragon Scroll. He fell to his knees, the candle falling from his nerveless hands.

But instead of going out, the flame found a liquid source that sparked and ignited. A flume of fire shot up right by the snow leopard's hand, then traveled along the bottom of the walls of the tomb, revealing bright painted murals in their wake. The pair were less amazed at the lamp oil in the connected wall sconces of the tomb than they were of what the flames revealed.

The phoenix was everywhere: soaring in between swirling clouds, its wings fluttering in the wind as its long golden peacock's tail flowed behind it like a bride's train. The phoenix perched on a tree branch, its beak opened wide in song. Below these amazing, breathtakingly realistic paintings were mosaic borders of polished semiprecious stone lined with gold that flickered and glowed in the firelight. Twelve red marble sconces in all, one for each of the twelve members of the Zodiac, each in their own respective cardinal direction in the room, burned brightly to display the masterful tomb painting. It took them a moment or two to take in the general grandeur, then another moment to realize that the legend of the Phoenix and the Phoenix Warrior was displayed, right there, right in front of them, on these very walls.

"Whoa," they simultaneously said.

"This is unreal…" Po gasped at the splendor. "I mean, look at this place!"

Tai Lung gazed about the room, breathlessly taking in the murals, dank and mildew-stained, but the paintings were still remarkably clear after a thousand years. Though the colors had faded, at the time of the tomb's construction and completion, the murals must have been very bright indeed. He peered closer, finding that the legend of the Phoenix of the Mountain and the Phoenix Warrior was depicted on the walls, linearly told as the mural wrapped around the four walls. He began to pace along it.

There was the Phoenix, which was being worshipped by the people. There were the invaders, warlords and bandits, and the people in despair. And here… Tai Lung froze, jaw hanging open in shock.

"Po, look at this," Tai Lung said. Po stepped over, lifting the candle (though he needn't have bothered) and both gasped at what they saw.

"Is that…?"

"It has to be," the snow leopard excitedly said. "Look at the regalia, the armor, the banner…"

"So that's what the Phoenix Warrior looked like?" The panda paused, then narrowed his eyes as he looked closer. Then he gasped and paled. "Um, Tai, doncha think that guy looks a little familiar?"

"Who, the Phoenix Warrior?" He held the light closer to the painting; spitting on his fingers, he wiped away grime and dust, scratching a little mold away…and his breath caught in his throat.

In golden and copper armor and a red banner, a dark brown bear raised a sword over his head to bring down on his enemies, while a family huddled safely behind him. The look on the painted bear's face was unmistakable…as were the squinted eyes, and the upper lip curled up into a sneer…

"There's no way…" he breathed. "No bleeding way…"

"Actually, there is."

Po and Tai Lung both jumped, the former dropping the candle in shock. With a flourish of golden robes, a hand suddenly reached out to grasp the candle before it hit the floor…and the intruder raised it to illuminate his face.

Sun Bear smirked at their expressions. "Thought I wouldn't notice, did you? I'm rather disappointed."

"How…?" Tai Lung wanted to ask so many questions that began with that word, but the old bear beat him to the punch. The old master cast his dark-eyed look around the room, sighing tiredly.

"This crypt was built many, many years ago… I've been here so long, I should know how to get into it," the old master explained. His narrowed eyes flicked over to the portrait on the wall, then made a face when his gaze settled upon the armored bear. "I knew I should have fired that artist—I was _never_ that portly, thank you."

After another moment of stunned silence, both warriors came to the same exact realization at the same exact time.

"You mean…" Po groaned and held his head, "I mean…_what_?"

Tai Lung looked between the mural and the old bear with disbelief. "That's…that can't be… It's impossible. No; no one but Oogway ever lived more than a thousand years! If that's _you _that would mean…"

Sun Bear waited for him to say it, giving the snow leopard an expectant look. "…That would mean what, Tenzin?"

Tai Lung swallowed hard, his throat suddenly dry. "That would mean _you_ were the Phoenix Warrior."

* * *

Behold! The first of the three Big Reveals!

A/N: Anyone who knows me knows I am a big fan of silly comedies; as an avid Mel Brooks fan, I would be remiss to not include a reference to my favorite scene from "Young Frankenstein" (The revolving wall scene with Gene Wilder and Teri Garr. "Put…the candle…BACK" God, classic.) Mr. Ping's rebuke to Zang is a reference to the Avatar: The Last Airbender episode with Aang's/Kiyoshi's trial; James Hong provided the voice of the judge (Aang: "I'd like to help, but I'm supposed to be boiled in oil." Judge: *changing the sentence* "There! Community service! Now serve our community and get rid of [them]!"). Mr. Lu's treatment of Su Lin is taken from first-hand real-life personal encounters with the general public during my years working retail; and no, sadly, I never could talk back like that. Shifu's "say that to my face" lines are a nod to Nathan Fillion's lines in Firefly episode "The Train Job".

Zang's fighting at the "Battle of the Black Cliffs" is actually an allusion to the legendary "Battle of the Red Cliffs", detailed in the epic story "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". I had to a different but similar-sounding battle, because I don't want to date this story at a specific point in Chinese history and find out later that I'm wrong (my ego's fragile like that…).

And yes, Nievelion, the bull carpenter that wanted to impale Zang on his horns is yet another shout-out to Zhuang :)

A little note on the astrology mentioned earlier in the chapter: all the information about the Chinese Zodiac I've provided are based on very basic sources (read: internet). The sign of the Sheep/Ram/Goat is often associated with the Western sign of Cancer (the Crab), which in itself is associated with the moon, water and femininity. And _fine_, maybe I like to add a little bit of psychology in there…it's a subject I happen to like, so sue me.


	11. Chapter 11: The Phoenix's Nest

Standard disclaimers apply, I don't own Kung Fu Panda or the characters, except the ones of my own invention, so please don't use my Ocs without my permission. Thank you.

Okay, now that the legal stuff is done...I apologize if a lot of what Sun Bear says is somewhat confusing; a lot of his character is based off of a priest who used to preach at my church (before I left organized religion); he was a cool guy, and very fond of the Socratic method of teaching. Thankfully, the Father was nowhere near as short-tempered or violent as Sun Bear is...(kinda defeats the purpose of being a clergyman, doesn't it?)

Anyway, I hope this chapter answers a few questions. Its shorter than most of the others, but I hope its enjoyable anyway.

* * *

Chapter 11: The Phoenix's Nest

* * *

The air in the empty crypt hung stagnant and silent, the panda and snow leopard still completely stunned, breathless, their brains still struggling to comprehend even as the old ursine master waited patiently for them to recover. The shock of the revelation was enough to send both warriors faltering on their feet.

Sun Bear, however, was proactive enough to clear his throat as he blew out the candle.

"Well done, gentlemen; bravo indeed," he said, setting the candle on the altar.

"How did you know we were here?" Po asked, still looking rather guilty.

"I went to check on _you_," he said, glancing at Tai Lung, "and found that neither of you were in your cells, so, I deduced that you had come to the library. You left a light in that back room, and I knew from the disturbed dust and my old journal you left on the desk that you had entered the secret passage…and were probably stuck back here."

"You got that right," Po nodded. "But, um, we can totally explain about all this…"

"Oh, there's no need," the old master said, glancing about the room until his gaze settled back on Tai Lung. "I've figured everything out already. I may be old, but I'm not senile. I was wondering how long until you found this place, or some other clue I left behind. Still, you discovered the secret long before I expected you to. For that, Tenzin, I applaud you…or should I say Tai Lung?"

That got the snow leopard's attention: "You know who I am?"

"_Know_?" The old bear laughed harshly. "Are you kidding? I've been waiting for you these last forty years. You put on a good deception; I admit I had no idea who you were when you first arrived, but it wasn't until I looked back at Oogway's letters that I put the final pieces together. Not to mention, you are very much like your mother."

Tai Lung felt his throat constrict with emotion. "…You knew my mum?"

"A lifetime ago…well, a lifetime for _you_, perhaps," the bear chuckled. "I knew she was a prodigy with kung fu, and died young. I had heard rumors she had been married, but I never knew she had a son. Before all that, she came here, once, on the urging of her teacher…"

"Auntie Wu?"

"Good lord, that old bat's still alive? And is Lien still going by that? Not surprising; that was a moniker she picked up in her youth. Always had a rather maternal streak about her…" He drew closer, looking into Tai Lung's face. "Yes, very much like your mother…you have her eyes. I thought I recognized them, when you first arrived, but I couldn't place it. I had my suspicions, but I didn't believe it possible until you used part of the Lotus Style against me. Nima was quite the warrior herself. Quite a bit of fire in that one…and quite a bit of fire in you…" he stepped away and hid his hands in his sleeves. "Quite a bit of fire, indeed. I was a fool to ignore all the signs, the omens…

"You see, the entirety of the legend is as follows: the Phoenix Warrior had to go through a complete rebirth of the soul…though of course literally dying and coming back to life helps. He had to be buried underground for a generation, and rise from beneath the earth into a new life. I should have known…" he shook his head in disbelief with rueful smile, "I should have known when I first heard of your escape…"

Still confused, the snow leopard said, "I'm not sure I follow you…"

"Then perhaps Shang—or, rather, Po—would oblige?" Sun Bear offered. "You seemed to figure things out rather quickly, didn't you?"

Po looked at Tai Lung guiltily, then cleared his throat and told his friend, "Um, well…yeah, I heard all the legends and stuff, and remember what we read in the journal about the Phoenix Warrior, how he was supposed to die and be buried for a generation…and I think that's proof that you are the new Phoenix Warrior."

Tai Lung furrowed his brows in uncertainty. "Po, I didn't die, and I was never buried…"

"Actually…you did, and you were."

Tai Lung raised a brow.

Po continued by asking, "How do you define a generation, as happening every…?"

"Every twenty years or so, I suppose," the snow leopard answered. "But that still—"

"And remember you keep saying that you 'rotted' in jail for _twenty years_?" the panda pressed. "Your prison was inside a mountain, Tai…which is technically underground… And when I used the Wuxi Finger Hold on you…well, you _technically_ died…"

The realization visibly dawned on his face, his amber eyes widening with awe. It seemed too good to be true…he refused to believe it. They were legends, sure, but that didn't make them fact… "This is some sort of joke." He turned to Sun Bear. "This can't be real."

"It is real," the old bear said. "It is happening; this is no dream. The signs all point to you, Tai Lung, just as the signs all pointed to Po. Oogway made a wise choice in a successor."

Even as Po's face warmed with a modest blush, the color quickly drained when the old master's words struck him in an odd way. "Wait…a successor? Am I supposed to be the Grand Master someday?"

Sun Bear stared at him, an incredulous and somewhat horrified look on his face. "You mean…he…" he shook his head and exhaled heavily. "He never _told_ you?"

"Never told me what?" Po asked with genuine confusion.

"That you…he…" Sun Bear raggedly sighed and finished quickly. "Po…Oogway was your predecessor. He was not just the protector of the Dragon Scroll…he was its author. Oogway was the first—and before you, the _only_—Dragon Warrior."

This, if possible, shocked them even more. But as they shared astonished, disbelieving looks, both of them thought it over.

Oogway had always been adamant that the Dragon Warrior be a tactful person, one more concerned with peace and diplomacy than with conquest and power. That was the reason Tai Lung had been denied, and why Tigress had been denied the Dragon Scroll. But surely, the creator of kung fu would have chosen a successor who actually _knew_ how to fight, didn't he? But perhaps that was the method to his madness, because choosing a big fat panda to be the greatest warrior in kung fu history was, by and large, complete lunacy.

But strangely, it started to make sense. Tai Lung—and Shifu, Po was sure of—had never seen the tortoise lose his temper. Even when Tai Lung had been mentioned, Oogway had never said a cross word about him. Po wondered if the tortoise had ever said a cross word to _anyone_ in his whole life. He had always been patient, kind, endearing, and never looked down on someone for lacking something…just like Po.

While this was starting to make sense to Po, Tai Lung was reeling with this discovery. No wonder he'd been denied the Dragon Scroll! He had never listened when Oogway said knowing how to fight wasn't enough. Knowing _when_ to fight was of greater import…but that was a lesson Tai Lung had always ignored.

"But I don't understand…why lie about it? Why hide it?" Po asked.

"This is not the place to speak of these things," Sun Bear said, drawing his robes around him. He cast a quick glance around the crypt and beckoned them. He reached into a jar by the door and extracted a handful of sand and dust to extinguish the flames. "Let's retire to someplace a bit more private…and a little less morbid…"

* * *

He took them to his personal quarters, which, though cramped, was still substantially bigger than the cells belonging to the other monks. The room was about the size of two cells put together, which wasn't that big at all, yet Sun Bear had managed to have both his pallet and a low table for his use. The table was covered with scrolls and bound books at the moment, which he began to pick up and place to the side. He invited the two warriors to sit at the table while he tidied up.

"Make yourselves at home. Now that we can be completely honest with each other, it may make your training easier and more efficient. Oh, and while we're in here," he said with a quick nod to Tai Lung, "I won't count any swears that go towards your Swear Jar tab."

"Thank you."

"Now, the journal you discovered," Sun Bear explained as he stacked books and scrolls in the corner, "was a ruse meant to throw people off. I couldn't help overhearing you before you fell behind the wall—you were correct in that this place was designed as a fortress, to protect the Phoenix Scroll _and_ my true identity. The Jade Palace has numerous defenses courtesy of the natural geography, but the Phoenix Temple is sadly lacking there."

"I call Bull," Po protested. "This is one tough mountain to climb!"

"I concur," Tai Lung agreed.

"Aside from the altitude," the ursine master said with a strained tone, "We had little in the way of defense. Fortunately, this mountain has many natural caves that we've utilized over the years for storage and evacuation if necessary. Fortunately, no one has been foolish enough to attack the monastery in five hundred years. Those stories about mountain spirits and ghosts haunting the slope tend to deter less scrupulous men."

"So there aren't any spirits guarding that pagoda, are there?" Tai Lung questioned.

"Of course there are," Sun Bear snorted. "Phoenixes guard that pagoda."

Both younger warriors stared at him. "You _are_ pulling my leg, surely?" the snow leopard asked.

"I am not. The Phoenix and her descendants guard this place and its secrets, just as the dragon and his descendants guard the Jade Palace. You may not always see them, but they're there. The strength of your powers, Po, is in direct correlation to your proximity to a dragon. That is how you were able to defeat Tai Lung so easily before—you were close to the home of a sleeping dragon, while he was far away from the homes of the phoenixes.

"Tai Lung on the other hand, your powers should not have started to manifest until you came here…but that doesn't appear to be the case. Phoenixes live in deserts, mountains and places of heat. Dragons live in forests, waters, and places known for cold…"

"And Chorh-Gom was in a mountain in Mongolia," the snow leopard gasped. "Does that have anything to do with my escape?"

"Oh gods no," the master laughed. "You did that yourself—and good show, by the bye."

"Erm, thanks? But…how do you know all this about me? You've never met me before now."

Finishing his cleaning, the old bear clapped dust off his hands and sat opposite them at the low table. Sun Bear's dark eyes bored into the snow leopard's as he explained.

"Tai Lung, I kept in close correspondence with Oogway for many, many years, and especially all throughout your training," the old master said. "He told me of the day you'd been discovered on their doorstep. Later, he told me that, when you were younger, he thought he'd found the Dragon Warrior—his successor—at last. I still have his letters, if you're interested in what he said about you. But as you grew older, survived your teenage years, became a young man, he noticed changes in you…"

"Darkness," he sighed, with mixed depression and aggravation. "He saw darkness in me."

"Yes, but it was a darkness he recognized, a darkness he had seen in an old friend of his," he said with an ironic smile. Sun Bear said it straight, "He told me you were not cut out to be the Dragon Warrior…but that you _were_ a prime candidate to be the Phoenix Warrior. We started making plans to have you sent to study kung fu with me once you had finished mastering the scrolls, but you had gone berserk before Oogway could completely explain these plans to you. In the end, _that_ was why he denied you the Dragon Scroll. It wasn't that you weren't worthy—you _were_ worthy, but not of _that_ scroll. You have to understand," Sun Bear said, looking extremely contrite. "He and I only wanted what was best for you. I should have known, from the first time he wrote about you, what you were capable of…"

"Capable of being a monster," the snow leopard muttered.

"If you'd _listen_," Sun Bear growled, "and stop being so impatient, perhaps you would realize what I'm trying to tell you, you middle-aged fool!"

"I am _not_ that old!"

"Yes, you did terrible things," Sun Bear continued, "but you can't hang yourself on that. You need to let it go. What's past is past, you can't change it, so there's no point worrying about it. Now, be patient…I'll answer all your questions tonight, if you'll permit me…"

Po immediately launched into a volley of queries: "How are you so old and still alive? Where's the Phoenix Scroll? What's the secret of the scroll? How did you and Oogway meet? Was there really a Great Fight? How many other secret passages are there? How did you _really_ know where we were and who we were? How come Tai never heard of you before now? And how come you never visited the Va—"

SMACK.

"OW!"

Sun Bear nodded at Tai Lung. "Thank you."

The snow leopard cracked his knuckles after having slapped the panda on the side of the head. "My pleasure."

Po rubbed his head and glared at him. "You bastard!"

"If you would keep your mouth shut and let the man talk," Tai Lung said with a sigh, "He just might answer you!"

"Hey, I just wanted to make sure he knew all our questions before he got started!"

"I'm sure he's going to have a question and answer session, Po!"

Sun Bear's already short fuse flared, and he brought out his trusty bamboo staff to bop them both on the head. With two well-aimed _whaps_ he silenced their burgeoning argument. "Will you _stop_? Have some dignity; you fight like an old married couple!"

"We do not!" Tai Lung snapped.

"And where the _hell_ does that thing keep coming from?" Po demanded, pointing at the staff.

The snow leopard muttered, "He probably pulled it out of his—" Then he mewed when Sun Bear glared and raised the staff again to bring down on his head.

"Would you like to finish that sentence, Tai Lung?"

"No, sir," he answered contritely.

"Good." The old master laid the staff across his knees and cleared his throat. Noting how the panda and snow leopard appeared to give him complete undivided attention, he began his tale:

"Oogway and I had known each other since we were both young men, and when he passed over into the next world, I knew immediately; there are certain bonds far stronger than mere friendship and fraternity. We had known each other for so long, we could read each other's minds…"

"You mean it _seemed_ like you could," Po said.

"No, we could actually read each other's minds." Sun Bear tapped the side of his head. "We had a link, he and I, and we could communicate over great distances without even speaking a word. As we grew older, and lived farther and farther apart, our link weakened; we couldn't read thoughts, but we could read emotions. I knew something awful had happened to him about twenty-five years ago…it was a feeling of utmost disappointment and sorrow…and I didn't find out until later that it was about Tai Lung's rampage and imprisonment. Consequently, I knew he had discovered his successor when one day, about four years ago, I felt suddenly very light and happy, more joyful than I had been in years—that was the day he chose Po to succeed him. And the day after that…" he sighed and shook his head. "Well, I knew what had happened then, too."

Both younger warriors shared a quick look then stared down at the tabletop. Sun Bear coughed and wrapped his robes closer around himself.

"I will go into more detail about that later on. For now, allow me to answer your questions. As for why we lied about our true identities, well, we had many enemies, and we could not tell anyone about the secrets of either scroll. The Dragon Scroll contains much more power than anyone will ever know, but it is not particularly dangerous. The Phoenix Scroll on the other hand…well, that's a completely different beast. The secret of the Phoenix Scroll would revolutionize the world, shake empires to the ground and bring the most hardened men to their knees…" he paused, seeing the effect of his words on Tai Lung's face. "We _had_ to pretend it was myth. We _had_ to spread the myths of the Dragon Scroll, to make it out to be something mythical, fantastic…fake. You know the stories of thieves and the like trying to take the Dragon Scroll by force? What do you think would have happened if they had come here for the Phoenix Scroll?"

"Disaster," the feline said. "It would have meant the end of China…"

"Perhaps," the old master shrugged. "But both Oogway and I had our reasons for keeping our real identities a secret, even hundreds of years after our enemies' deaths."

"Because of the Great Fight?" Po asked.

"Among other reasons," the old bear nodded at him. "Which means that I should probably tell you the whole story, so that you both understand what was at stake then, and what is at stake now." He waited until they had gotten comfortable, then began his narration:

"The legend I told you when you first arrived was true. There was a time before China was unified under the Imperial banner that it was in complete chaos. However, the fact is, gentlemen, I was simply in the wrong place at the right time… The short story is that I was on the run from my homeland. I had escaped from prison—escaped my own execution, actually—and decided to throw off my trackers by going North through the mountains, thinking that it wouldn't be so bad; how big could any mountain ever be…?" he smiled ruefully at the jagged peaks visible through the single open window. "When I say I was young and stupid, I heavily emphasize 'stupid'."

"What did you go to prison for?" Tai Lung interrupted, already finding interest in the sudden similarities the two shared. The parallel swiftly turned eerie:

"I was imprisoned, and nearly executed, for murder," Sun Bear said.

Tai Lung averted his gaze, his ears lowered in shame.

"Yes, I am ashamed of my actions, too," Sun Bear said truthfully, and almost gently. "But though it happened very long ago, that does not excuse my sins any more than shame excuses yours. The fact you know what you did was wrong is the first step.

"I somehow made it through the range of the Himalayas alive, and when I arrived near the border of China—right in the village at the foot of this mountain—I was skinnier than I am now, and, well, I'm sure I looked like hell. But I happened to have arrived at the worst possible—or best possible—time. A regiment was attacking the villagers, pillaging, looting…you name the clichés, they were doing it. Well, murderer or no, I still had morals. I fought the regiment, beat them back, killed a few—including their commander—and sent them packing. I somehow survived. Divine intervention, or sheer dumb luck, I've no idea. Either way, what I did that day would haunt me the rest of my life. As soon as the fray was over, the villagers told me they had prayed for a deliverer, and when they needed it most, there I was. I had heard of phoenixes in my homeland, and the legends are more or less the same…but being a heavenly warrior made flesh? Still, no matter how I denied it, they didn't believe me; before I knew it, I was the sovereign leader, the one even the elders came to for advice. I was twenty-one at the time."

Po let out a long, low whistle. "That's young."

"Yes, Po Ping, that is very young. Political power was something I never wanted, yet I got it. I started to become a recluse, an effort to get away from the stresses of it all, and partly because I was guilt-ridden thinking of these people worshipping a murderer. It still makes my stomach turn to think of it…

"I made myself a small house on this mountain—it's still standing, serving as a gatehouse to this monastery—and I holed myself up there. I lived alone for about five years. In those five years, though, I began to notice quite a few changes in me…abilities that were physically impossible, surreal dreams that became reality, and most distressingly, the ability to heal my own wounds."

Tai Lung perked up when he heard that last one. "Healing?"

"Yes," the old ursine nodded at him with a rather proud smile. "I should have known back when Little Brother's fever suddenly disappeared, and when Po's ribs were suddenly uninjured. I knew you had treated him after I left…but I didn't truly pay attention until you were hit by that flaming arrow; the place you were hit should have struck your lung, or at the very least ruptured an artery. In short, that was a kill shot, and yet you not only survived, but you just stood up and _walked_ off the field. The ability to heal is one attributed to the Phoenix…healing through its tears. That's the trick: you cannot heal others on command; you have to have an emotional connection with them, you need to pity them."

"So you started getting really cool abilities," Po said, "What happened next?"

Sun Bear stared out the window again, a slight, nostalgic smile on his face. "I saw the Phoenix. It was a marvelous thing…the statue in the higher pagoda, which I will eventually show you, is as close as mortal hands can depict such a wonder. It said nothing to me—nothing needed to be said. It was a sign that I was the peoples' protector, and they needed me to bring them peace. They needed me to restore balance to the karmic cycle. They needed me to purify China of the hatred and fear it had stewed in for so long. It was not until after this appearance that my, ah, otherworldly abilities began to truly manifest.

"When I had beaten back the regiment before, it was mostly dumb luck and good reflexes. I didn't know any more about being a warrior than a boy who gets into fights in school yards. But suddenly, I came upon this knowledge of a fighting form I could use…and even more remarkable, I sensed that I was not the only one aware of this fighting style.

"Before long, word reached me about two people who would forever change the course of my life. The first was a warlord, the eventual instigator of the Great Fight. The second, of course, was Master Oogway. Now, I knew more about the warlord than I did about Oogway—of the latter, all I knew were rumors; of the former, I knew everything there was to know. I had fought him before, and though we were mortal enemies, I believe he backed off after he realized I would most certainly kill him if I felt like it. I was a threat, but apparently, Oogway was the bigger threat.

"I learned of a plot to kill this great man, as they were calling him, this visionary. I didn't know Oogway; I just knew he was an innocent victim. I didn't know he and the warlord had once been allies, and that the warlord had turned on him…none of that mattered. To this day, I don't know what drove me to journey to Oogway's home, but journey I did, and long story short, I saved him. I'll spare you two the gory details."

"But why would _Oogway_ need saving?" Po asked. "He created kung fu!"

"At that time, he had not; at least not completely. He was developing the idea for it, and looking for a place to 'unlock the mysteries of the universe'. He was odd, but he was harmless, and I appreciated his upbeat, if unorthodox, attitude; it was a pleasant foil to my cynicism. Anyway, we decided it would be better to travel together to find this place he was looking for, lest he suffer another assassination attempt. Our travels eventually brought us to the Valley of Peace, where, on Wu Dan Mountain, we camped for…it must have been a few years. I can't remember. While there, we learned from each other, taught each other, and, once Oogway had unlocked the secrets to harmony and focus, we learned and developed kung fu. I was his very first student.

"His specialties were all the more defensive, deflecting motions. He studied the way the mantis struck, the way the crane's wings flapped, the way a monkey jumped from tree to tree. I, on the other hand, preferred the more aggressive forms. My style was—and still is—nothing but offense. Snake style, Tiger, Leopard…the strength and speed behind each of them were more suited to me. I'm hot-blooded; always have been, always will be, and I'm not ashamed of it.

"After our time on the mountain, we had become…'best friends' I guess you could say. We had our disagreements, we had our fights, but we were there for each other. He told me the secret he eventually locked into the Dragon Scroll, and served as my spiritual advisor. Young as he was, he was always like that, and would continue to be. He loved helping people, and nothing brought him more joy than seeing smiling faces, and children…oh, he loved children! You should have seen him; he was so excited to have something to teach, something with such profound wisdom, he wanted to build a school to teach everyone, from the poorest farmer to the richest prince…"

Po and Tai Lung both noticed the fond, wistful smile that spread unabashedly across the bear's wrinkled face as he recalled the good times he had shared with his oldest friend. Sun Bear chuckled and shook his head, "He was like that until the day he died…Heaven bless his soul…"

"…But the Jade Palace was built soon after, wasn't it?" Tai Lung asked, shocking Sun Bear out of his memories and back to the matter at hand.

"Yes, that's true. It seems our warlord 'friend' decided to have another go at killing Oogway, and me as well, so he and his army invaded the Valley of Peace. I believe it goes without saying that Oogway defeated him—I'm still not sure _exactly_ what he did or how he did it, but with one motion he created and applied a kung fu move so powerful it formed the chasm now known as the Devil's Mouth."

"_Oogway_ created that chasm?" Po gasped. "The chasm the Thread of Hope crosses?"

"The same," said Sun Bear with a nod. "After he saw what destruction it caused, he vowed never to use that move ever again. Kung fu very much a double-edged sword, as the saying goes. Oogway's plan was to create a natural barrier that would prevent any future invasion to the valley, but it caused such upheaval to the natural landscape that he recognized someone with less conscientious intentions could use that same move for unspeakable destruction. So that technique died with him.

"Well, either way, the citizens were so grateful for his help, they built the Jade Palace in thanks; they intended it to be a palace worthy of the Emperor of China. Oogway never saw it that way, of course; he was one man, a simple man, who had no use for hundreds of rooms and treasures galore. He saw a greater use for it than a private residence. He finally had the school he had envisioned, and began teaching kung fu immediately. I stuck around for a while, mostly doing administrative work while Oogway taught young warriors. But I quickly got tired of that and began teaching as well. Its funny how that works…I used to abhor the idea of teaching little brats, and yet as soon as I started, I came to love it.

"Once I knew enough, I theorized that opening a sister-school would be a good idea so we could spread kung fu across the country. Oogway agreed, so I set out to find an ideal location. My travels took me back to the mountain where I had seen the phoenix…" he hesitated, setting his jaw. "When I got there, the village was gone. Everyone was either enslaved or killed. The warlord was deliberately calling us out, threatening to do the same to every village in the country until he had control of all of Asia. I sent word to Oogway, who immediately answered the call, and brought an army with him. Leading them was a young peasant, a student of ours, a fellow who became the Emperor and progenitor of the current dynasty, but I'm getting ahead of myself."

"Was this the Great Fight?" Po asked.

Sun Bear nodded, suddenly grave, "Yes, yes it was. It was a bloodbath, on both sides. You've seen my journal—my memoir, actually—so you've got a good idea how awful it was. The warlord's entire army was annihilated. Most on our side were sent to meet their maker over the course of that hellish week. Even _we_ barely survived, Oogway and I. In fact, I was mortally wounded while protecting our dear friend and favorite student, the future emperor. It was Oogway's quick action that saved me—there was a spring he discovered on this very mountain, a spring that could heal any wound. He used its waters to seal up my wound but, when I was at the Gates of the Afterlife, he forced me to drink some of it. Well, that did the trick. Neither of us realized until much, much later what had really happened."

"It was a Spring of Eternal Life," Tai Lung finished. "Anyone who drank of its waters would be young forever…but that was just a myth, right?"

"Are you saying I look old?" Sun Bear glared.

"You've been alive for over one thousand years—of _course_ you look old!" he shot back. "But I admit you look pretty good for your age."

"Thank you. But you are mistaken about that spring," Sun Bear continued, "It was a spring that could heal all wounds great and small, but it did not ensure immortality. All it did was slow the progression of age. All things that live will die—that is a given. Some just take longer than others to meet the ultimate fate." He sighed. "When Oogway discovered what he had done…well," he smirked humorlessly. "Tell him _not_ to do something, and he'd do it anyway—he could be more stubborn than my self, sometimes. In short, he drank the spring's waters as well…"

"…So that you wouldn't be alone," Po finished. "He knew why immortality was actually a bad thing. Everyone you knew—your friends, your family, everyone—would grow old and die…and you'd still be young. You'd be all alone without him." The panda hesitated. "That's one heck of a sacrifice."

"That it was," the old bear nodded. "As a tortoise, he would have lived to be perhaps one hundred years old without the spring's waters, but he wanted to be sure I was well taken care of, and would never suffer loneliness. That was the 'curse' I spoke of in my journal. When I found out what he'd done to himself, I was furious; I refused to talk to him for years, though I eventually forgave him. For the past thousand years, he had been that one constant companion, the only one on the face of this earth who understood…"

"But he eventually died," Po said. "Master Shifu said he just…dissolved into flower petals and became the stars."

"A fitting death for the very first Dragon Warrior," Sun Bear explained. "Dragons represent the water that gives life to the earth, which bears the plants that sustain us…and if the stories he told are true," he said with a sharp look towards Tai Lung, "then that peach tree sustained _you _all throughout your childhood."

Tai Lung crossed his arms and stubbornly replied, "Say what you want—those are the best peaches in China."

"Okay, I get the 'earth' thing, with him being a tortoise and all," Po said. "But becoming stars—wait…" he groaned when he realized: "_Duh_…dragons are also associated with _heaven_…"

"Exactly," Sun Bear smiled. "But you have a valid point—Oogway _did_ die…and soon, so shall I."

"But you drank that water," Tai Lung protested.

"And you found that spring beneath this monastery, Tai Lung," the old master said. "In fact, that passage behind the bookcase was carved from this mountain by that spring's waters. It dried up decades ago. In order for us to prolong our lives, we needed to drink from it every hundred years…ten drinks for ten lifetimes…and once we discovered the spring was drying up, we knew we had to find successors to protect China after we died.

"The Great Fight was terrible indeed, and yes, we faked our deaths—for so long, we referred to ourselves only as the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior. Hardly anyone knew our true identities, and the ones who would have revealed us all died in that battle. I thought it was a cowardly thing to do, but Oogway had a good point: we had far too many enemies after that battle, and in order to protect our friends and students, we needed to keep up appearances that we were just simple monks teaching martial arts. Our identities as the two greatest warriors ever to defend China had to remain secret, so all documents, all records and paintings of us in our regalia, we either hid or destroyed. We even changed our names for good measure. After that, all the legends that sprang up about the two warriors were of our invention…"

Then the old bear chuckled. "We started a contest, he and I, trying to outdo each other on what impossible things we were capable of. I started with 'power over life and death' and 'controlling fire'; he had his 'hearing a butterfly's wings beat' and 'seeing light in the darkest cave'. He ended up winning for the 'limitless power' bit. I was pretty annoyed about that; I mean, how can you top that?"

"Ability to heal the sick is pretty good," Tai Lung offered.

"Not to mention your own wounds," Po pointed out. "But does that mean none of those things are possible?"

"Judging by your tone, I'm assuming that you've actually experienced it." Sun Bear paused. "Po…did you actually see in the darkness of that cave?"

"Well…not really well, but I could see enough without bumping into anything. And," the panda said, "I haven't exactly heard a butterfly's wings beat…but I have been able to hear things from a great distance." And he had…somehow. After Dalang had broken Tigress's heart—for the first and last time, if he knew what was good for him—Po had discovered the mourning female just by listening to the wind and hearing her sobs, and followed the negative energy he felt straight to its source. And somehow, in all the time he had spent at the Phoenix Temple, he could tell if someone was sneaking up on him. He could hear footsteps from yards away, and sometimes from clear across the monastery. And for some inexplicable reason, he had certain…feelings. Like premonitions, a sense that something had happened or would happen. He stopped short of calling them prophetic visions; that was more Oogway's territory. But somehow…the panda had developed a sixth sense that Oogway himself had been known for.

And suddenly, Tai Lung felt much the same as the panda. He _had_ exhibited those 'rumors'. In his fight with Shifu after his escape from prison, Tai Lung himself had wielded pure fire in his very hands and used it as a weapon. Those blue flames should have seared the flesh right off his bones, but they didn't. He hadn't even felt any heat! He had also conquered death and risen above it. How many people had actually survived the Wuxi Finger Hold? Only him. He had risen from that veritable tomb that was called "prison", and in a wave of fire and destruction, he had…almost quite literally…risen from the ashes of Chorh-Gom's destruction.

Sun Bear seemed to see right through their thoughts. "As incredible as all this sounds, you must both understand…my friend Oogway was right. Nothing is impossible. Something might not be very _probable_, but it is never impossible. Mortals have the potential to do amazing things, if only they focus on it. The truth of the Dragon Scroll is simply this: Anyone can be a hero, and anyone can do the amazing feats that you both are capable of."

"So what's the secret of the Phoenix Scroll?" Tai Lung asked.

"Nice try," the old master said with a smirk. "And that's a subject for another conversation. It is late for both of you, and we have much to do. You have been here two weeks, and I have laid the foundation for your training to begin in earnest. By my estimations, we only have two weeks to teach what takes years. So, both of you, to your beds; by dawn, your training will intensify."

* * *

They hardly slept that night, and were awoken hours before dawn by First Brother. The old lion actually smiled at them this morning and took them directly to breakfast. Evidently, Sun Bear had told him who their visitors really were, and the lion was more than happy to treat them less as honored guests…and more as family. "You're in for a treat," he said. "A couple of our brothers went down to the village last week for ministry and came back this morning with donations from the villagers. How does rice with egg and sliced vegetables sound?"

"What, you're actually feeding us now?" Tai Lung quipped.

The old lion chuckled. "Heavens, I hope so—you two have gotten far too thin for my liking. After breakfast, though, Master Sun Bear would like to see you separately for private training sessions today. Master Sha—er, sorry, _Po_—you will train with him this morning. Tai Lung—that _is _your name, right?—you will have him for the afternoon. In your downtime, you are to practice what you've learned. That is his plan for today, so eat well—you'll need the energy."

Breakfast was a simple affair, but even the addition of scrambled eggs and pickled vegetables to the rice—and salt!—was a welcome change, and, much to the warriors' surprise, a luxury. Po never would have thought salt and soy sauce—hell, even having _egg_ in his breakfast—would have been a luxury, but when he glanced over at Tai Lung to see how he was eating, he was surprised to see him taking his time, savoring each bite like it was his last meal. Then the panda's stomach turned, recalling that, while still in prison, the snow leopard had probably treated _every_ meal as a last meal. The more he thought about it, the more the panda remembered that, since he'd known him, Tai Lung had _always_ eaten that way. He didn't scarf down his meals like a starving wolf (like Dalang did), nor did he ruminate and wax poetic about food in general (as Po's dad had done while growing up). Did twenty years in lockdown make him appreciate such simple things all the more? For the first time, Po felt extremely guilty for taking for granted such things as a filling meal and warm bed.

After breakfast, they reported to Sun Bear, who gave Tai Lung a reading list and instructions to visit the library and learn as much as he could about phoenixes and certain kung fu schools; Hung Ga and Northern Shaolin featured most prominently. In the meantime, the old bear would work with Po on practical application of kung fu.

Unfortunately for Po, "practical application" meant getting his butt handed to him by a guy one thousand years his senior. Not since his first training session with the Furious Five had Po been so beaten up. With every hit Sun Bear got in during the hour-long sparring session, the more Po noticed just how much Tai Lung had in common with the old ursine. For one thing, Sun Bear could be a real bastard. But Po already knew that. He was also brash, aggressive, yet coolly confident in a way Tai Lung never was. Did it have something to do with being around the block for one thousand years that the old master felt—perhaps rightly so—that he knew more than enough to warrant this confidence?

"Your stance is off, Po, turn your feet out. More. More! Good, bend the knees, lunge right, fists up. Now hold. What does this position remind you of?"

He answered immediately: "The Warrior Pose! I _knew_ that yoga would help!"

Sun Bear smiled, "That it did. I learned it from a traveling monk from South Asia about nine hundred years ago, and I'm glad I did! Daily practice has made me more limber now than I was as a child. And see how your balance has improved? A marked difference."

"Y'know, I also gotta say," Po said slowly, "It is really, really weird that you're suddenly being so nice."

This made Sun Bear laugh, but Po didn't see the joke. Instead, he had a feeling that he had spoken too soon.

"Oh, not to worry, Dragon Warrior," the old bear assured, "Soon enough, you will learn that I can be a real hard-ass."

"Two _jiao_."

"I'll knock it off your tab."

"I don't have a tab."

"After this morning's lesson, you will."

"Okay, Deal." Po turned on the balls of his feet and blocked Sun Bear's strike with his forearm, twisted and grabbed the other bear's wrist and jerked. Sun Bear, as agile as a cat, moved with the momentum Po had created, rolling over the panda's back. Po caught his ankle and yanked him back down to earth, but Sun Bear returned his block with a high kick, which Po block with his palm, thrusting down sharply. The old master, surprised, fired back with a sharp open-palmed thrust to the panda's chin; Po arched his back then back-flipped, landing in a split then propelled himself back up into the Dragon Stance.

Sun Bear stood back and lightly clapped. "_Very_ well done. It seems my instincts to teach you yoga have significantly affected your more gymnastic abilities."

"Howzat?" Po asked, wisely not letting up his stance.

"Flexibility notwithstanding," Sun Bear pointed out, "You're more aware of your center of gravity, and your breathing has made it possible to do what you just did without getting winded. The reason we lose our breath when exercising is because we are not using our breath _correctly_. That," he suddenly kicked high; Po caught his ankle, but Sun Bear picked himself up and executed a flawless roundhouse kick—which Po dodged effortlessly. The old master smirked when he landed and straightened. "That, and your reaction time is also greatly improved."

"But that doesn't have anything to do with yoga, right?" Po asked, letting go of his foot. "I mean, we're always moving so slowly in yoga. How does it make me quicker?"

"Because it teaches you to _listen_," he said. He made a dismissive gesture. "Sparring is over for the morning. Let's continue to the next lesson. Now, because my old friend departed before he could accurately explain the Dragon Scroll's secrets, or the abilities of the Dragon Warrior, the rest of our lessons will deal exclusively with just that."

"But, um," Po stumbled along behind him. "What does listening have to do with being fast?"

"It doesn't," was the answer. "It makes you smarter, in more ways than one. Don't worry, I'll have this conversation with Tai Lung later. People, I've noticed, are rather fickle: When they want something, like money or food, they don't go out and get it themselves through dedication and hard work. They think that asking a divine being for a blessing of money or food is all that they will need…then they either get angry when they feel they are ignored, or despondent when the feel they are unworthy. Now, what do you think is their biggest mistake?"

"They…aren't doing anything for themselves. They just depend on someone else to do it, right?"

"Well, yes and no—the problem is that they keep asking, and asking, and asking, then protest when they don't get what they want. 'I prayed to get a position in the government, but now I'm a laborer'. 'I prayed for seven healthy sons, but all I get are daughters'. What they all have in common is that they always talk…but never listen."

"…Okay, I _really_ don't follow you."

Sun Bear sighed. "We are always asking, but never listening. Prayer is not a one-sided communication to Heaven, but too many people treat it that way. Prayer is a conversation with gods and nature, but most mortals only wish to tell their part and not bother listening to the other side. That is why we meditate. Prayer is when we talk to the gods. Meditation is when the gods talk to _us_."

Po's expression brightened as he got it. "_That's_ why Shifu keeps telling me to meditate!"

"Exactly," Sun Bear said with a smile. "And, in fact, this is the same conversation I had with Oogway when he first taught me meditation…verbatim, oddly enough."

"What else can you tell me about him?" the panda asked. He followed Sun Bear back to the courtyard with the posts. The old master paused just short of the closest post and heaved a heavy sigh. Po felt bad for bringing it up. "You really miss him, don't you?"

"When we lose something, there is inevitably an emptiness that follows," the old master despondently replied. "No mortal likes that feeling. We eat so we do not feel empty inside. We drink so we do not thirst for anything more. But once that fullness is taken away, if we are not careful, we starve." Sun Bear shook himself out of it and addressed the Dragon Warrior. "Oogway was, in a word, patient. He never acted unless he knew exactly what he was getting into. For the most part, you are of the same mind, but you haven't always been thus. If I am right, you literally dropped into your title because you wanted to 'see the Dragon Warrior', and, when you couldn't get through the door in more logical manners, used fireworks to propel yourself over the wall—"

"Okay, that's really creepy, how did you know that?"

"—Let me finish. _Then_ you decide to show off to the Furious Five—who rather dislike you at this point—and then get your butt handed to you on Shifu's obstacle course…" here he made a face and said, "I apologize for that—I'm afraid a lot of that is my influence. I guess Shifu decided to take it easier on his students."

"Knowing what I know now about you, I can safely say that."

"Great, he's training a bunch of wimps. Fantastic."

"Hey!"

"No offense to you and your friends, of course. Now where was I? Ah, yes, _then_ you just jumped into training with the Five, not realizing you were a complete novice going up against five highly-trained killing machines…then _later_ you ran right into Tai Lung to fight him without really knowing what to expect—"

"Seriously, how do you know all this? This is getting really, really creepy."

"The point you need to take away from that is this," the old bear sharply said. "You can't stumble into things and hope they turn out for the best. That's how you did it with Jiao Shen, and you nearly died."

"We _had_ a plan!"

"And had Oogway seen it, he would have ordered you not to use it!"

"How the _hell_ do you know all this?" Po angrily asked.

"Three _jiao_," Sun Bear tallied.

"Aw, damn."

"Three _fen_."

"Aw c'mon, man!"

"Do you really want to know how I know?"

"Would be nice, yeah."

"Hop up onto the first post and I'll tell you."

Po stared at him a moment, then obeyed, keeping in mind the last lesson he had learned here. He waited until he had balanced himself on the top of the pole, then Sun Bear joined him on an adjacent post.

"As I stated last night, Oogway and I had a…link. A sixth sense, but also an alternate form of communication. We could hold entire conversations without opening our mouths. We could convey fear and joy without changing our expressions. I couldn't see what he saw, but before he passed, he 'told' me of how he found you, and how you were acclimating to your new lifestyle. He had more encouraging words for you than I would have had. But I could tell that he was severely worried, that you were very much a novice. But he saw something in you that he believed also existed in Tai Lung. Are you familiar with the legend of the red thread?"

"Of course," Po said. "But I thought that was to connect two people in love?"

"Not necessarily. It _can_, and it is usually insinuated as such, but it more or less means that you and he are two halves of one whole. You are - in a purely non-romantic sense - each other's soul mate."

"Um...just an FYI, we're both straight."

"What part of _non-romantic_ was I unclear about?" Sun Bear growled. "You two are alike in many ways, and unalike where you each lack what the other has. You lack Tai Lung's aggression, but he lacks your patience, for example. You are at once alike, but also like yin and yang; you are both physically white and black, showing your dual natures, internal and external. The Dragon and Phoenix are two halves of the same whole, just as you are. Alone, you are both capable of great things, but when you joined forces to defeat the Jiao, you became capable of amazing things. Oogway and I were similar: alone, we could do great things, but together we were much, much stronger.

"You two are already very close, as good friends should be, but I can sense that there is something holding both of you back. By the time you leave, I hope to awaken the mental link in you both, so that you have that to protect yourselves with outside these walls."

"So what's holding us back, d'ya think?"

"My guess? You are both keeping secrets from each other, terrible secrets. You are not openly honest with each other."

"Hey, we're plenty honest!"

"So why are you so hung up about being mistaken as a couple?"

"Because he's married, and that would be an awkward New Year's dinner."

"Always have an answer for everything, don't you?"

"Yeah, and so did Oogway."

Sun Bear stared back at him, stunned that he had been so caught off-guard. "Touché, Dragon Warrior. Getting back on topic, during the course of your training, we will break down those barriers so you two can grow stronger than before, but before then, you need to be completely comfortable with knowing each other's deepest, darkest secrets."

"Don't you think we might have good reasons to keep those secrets?"

"Reason hardly ever factors into anything at all, in life or in fate."

"So you don't think everything happens for a reason?"

"Destiny is destiny, Po. I've been around a long time and even I don't know everything, and even if I could still speak to Oogway, I've a feeling he wouldn't know anymore than I do right now. Sometimes, coincidence happens. Sometimes…" he said with a shrug. "Shit just happens. I'll knock six _jiao_ off your tab."

"I don't have a tab going."

"You do now. Do you have your balance?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

Sun Bear nodded once. "Good. On one foot, hop over to the next post."

"What happens if I fall?"

"Has your father never taught you that lesson? If you fall, you get right back up."

Po looked back at the closest post, then took a deep breath. He slowly let it out, then bent his knee to prepare for the leap. He knew hesitation could cost him, but he paused anyway, waiting until the thudding in his chest slowed. He jumped, and successfully landed on one foot on top of the post.

"I did it! Heck yeah, man!"

"Good," Sun Bear said, following him by effortlessly hopping over to the pole next to him. "You strike me as a real people-pleaser."

Po blushed, "Well, I try..."

"Then stop trying."

Po frowned. "What? Why?"

"Both you and Tai Lung have significant personal flaws that are holding you back. In your case, you try to please everybody you know and everyone you don't know."

"But isn't that a good thing? My dad told me that making others happy is a good thing and you should always try to do that."

The old master sighed through his nose. "I am not saying your father is wrong; having empathy for others is a grand virtue. But Po, I have noticed this in you since you arrived, and through our talks: Living your life by trying to make other people happy is making you miserable. Nothing you've ever done has ever been for you, it's always been for someone else. My advice to you: be selfish for once. Don't give a care what people will think, they are entitled to believe what they want, but that doesn't make them right. Live your life for you. Your duty is to no one else but you."

Po gave him a confused look. "But if I'm the Dragon Warrior, shouldn't I put others' needs before mine?"

"Would you put others' safety before your own?"

"Isn't that how it works?"

"I used to think that; Oogway, however, taught me 'it is better to be a living coward than a dead idiot'. Do what Tai Lung did to escape from Chorh-Gom. Could he have attempted to escape long before he did? Certainly. Why didn't he? Because he knew it wasn't the right time. He needed to wait long enough for his guards to get complacent, to forget that he was dangerous; unfortunately, he had to wait two decades for that to happen."

"The fact it took so long probably says something about him, doesn't it?"

"Quite possibly, which reminds me that I ought to go check on him now; its almost time for his training session to begin."

Po nodded, and prepared to hop over to the next post, "Okay. I'll still be here."

The old master stared up at him. "What are you doing?"

He hesitated. "Don't you want me to get to all the posts today?" Po asked.

Sun Bear looked puzzled. "You mean in _one_ day?"

"Yeah."

"Why are you concerned with twenty posts when you can only stand on one?"

As the old bear turned to collect Tai Lung for his training session, Po stared at the nineteen other posts, then swore, "Son of a _bitch_."

"Five _jiao_," the old bear tallied. "While you're ruminating over our lesson, I'd like you to go to the library and look up texts about Dragons, but also texts about Tai Chi and Ba Gua. I believe these two forms will appeal to you just as they appealed to Oogway. Now, if that will be all," he said as he picked up his staff and began to walk away to collect his other charge, "I will see you at dinner."

* * *

Tai Lung rubbed his tired eyes and leaned his elbows against the table. There was more concerning phoenixes than he expected, but there was also a hell of a lot to remember. For one thing, he had no idea how many cultures outside China actually believed the mythical firebird existed. Something that intrigued him most was the notion that a phoenix's call sounded like "the most beautiful of music which mortal hands can never make". It lived for five hundred years then expired in a fire of its own making, only to be reborn as a chick from its own ashes. It was a personification of sunlight, and of what one author (translated from the original text) described as the Sacred Triad: Life, Death, and Resurrection.

As varied as these cultures were, they - almost alarmingly - shared the same myths: it was a firebird, that made nests out of sacred herbs and grasses, that it brought great blessings to its protectors and grave doom to its captors. When he read that last part, he felt a chill. He'd hardly call himself a blessing (well, before he got married, he briefly considered himself a blessing to women everywhere, but Mei Xing beat some modesty into him), but as far as the Anvil of Heaven was concerned, he was most certainly a curse.

His readings surprised him and gave him pause. How was it, that so many different cultures with starkly different religions, all believed in phoenixes? And in said cultures, he also noticed parallels to dragons he was familiar with, but in that case, many were feared, monstrous creatures. The instances of malevolent dragons outnumbered the instances of benevolent ones. This made him worry. He remembered Sun Bear's warning about Po being most corruptible because of his innocence. Judging by the illustrations of dragons from faraway places with strange tongues and stranger cultures, Tai Lung feared how he would be able to keep Po from turning into monsters like the ones he saw.

Someone coughed behind him and he looked to see one of the scribe monks pointing him to the door. The snow leopard took this as a cue to put his things away and go meet Sun Bear for his private lesson. But one last time, he looked down at his book on phoenix mythology...and paused to read a strangely familiar passage:

_The Firebird, commonly associated as the greatest enemy of the Deathless. To have a Firebird on your side is to gain protection from the Deathless's wrath. Only an egg-layer can lead you to the source of the Deathless's soul, locked inside an egg. The diety of Life-Death-Rebirth thus triumphs over the Deathless._

Somehow, and he couldn't explain why until much later, that passage suddenly seemed so significant to him. He closed this book and left it where it was, then quietly asked one of the scribes to leave it out for him, that he wished to see it later. When he got outside, he was hit with a blast of cold air and a sharp wind, but if anyone else in that courtyard noticed, they didn't show it.

_Odd, but oh well._ He took a few steps forward, and nearly tripped over something in his path. A small something, a fuzzy something. He looked down and smiled at Little Brother, who only glanced back up at him before returning to what had occupied his attention before the snow leopard's arrival.

Tai Lung knelt next to the tiny red panda, who looked up only briefly then went back to making shapes in the dust. Tai Lung noticed that the little swirls and curlicues made rudimentary pictures—the child was drawing. He chuckled; it seemed he wasn't the only artistically-minded warrior.

He reached out his hand and drew a quick picture in the dirt. The child watched until he was done, then peered at the picture and smiled. It was a "sketch" of a red panda in a monk's habit. Sharing a smile with the snow leopard, the child brushed his hand over the dirt, erasing his own drawings to draw a big cat-like creature in similar dress. When he started poking his little finger in the dirt to make spots, Tai Lung grinned and laughed. The red panda child pointed at the picture and gave him a gap-toothed grin, the holes evidence of missing baby teeth.

"Very good—I think it's a good likeness, don't you?" Tai Lung joked, making the child giggle. Tai Lung erased his own picture and drew another, a landscape of sugarloaf mountains and rough, verdant forests. Then he put in a tiny square house at the base of one mountain. He pointed to it and said, "That's what my home looks like."

The red panda quickly erased his rough cat picture and started drawing what looked like rice terraces. He too drew a small house and pointed at it, with a small, sad smile on his face.

Tai Lung noticed it right away. "You miss it, don't you, your home?"

The child nodded, and sniffed, wiping away a couple tears.

"Is this where your family lives?"

The child hesitated, then shook his head and wrote a single character in the dirt: "fire".

Tai Lung felt a chill, getting a sickening sense of déjà vu, and asked, "And your family?"

He heard a little sob and the child furiously kicked and upset the dirt, angrily erasing the picture of his lost home, even as he started crying. The snow leopard suddenly recalled a similar situation, not too long ago, when he learned from another panda about the loss of her family. Wordlessly, as he had done then, he reached out and held the child, despite the fact the novice was punching and kicking, having no other outlet to express his anger and sorrow.

"I understand," Tai Lung said soothingly. "I lost my home and family, too. It hurts, doesn't it?"

The child nodded, having settled for loud sobbing, and the snow leopard realized this was the loudest the child had ever been since he'd known him. "I know it hurts, but its all right…it will be all right."

Someone cleared their throat and Tai Lung looked up, spying Sun Bear standing in the doorway. A single soundless communication passed between them and the old master beckoned the feline to follow him, and bring the crying novice with him. The snow leopard noted how sorrowful the old bear looked…a far cry from what he had seen thus far in his character. He followed, still holding the little red panda in his arms, until they reached the dormitory. Sun Bear cocked his head at the child's cell, then walked off; Tai Lung took the hint and put the tot in his bed, drawing the blanket around his trembling little body. When Sun Bear arrived a short time later with some hot milk tea, the cub sullenly drank it, then cried himself to sleep.

"You got more out of him in five minutes than I have in five months," the master suddenly whispered, once he was sure the novice was asleep. "I would have never thought to communicate that way. All he ever does is pantomime."

"He was like this before?"

"Someone brought him here six months ago, saying he had wandered into the village. Most assumed he was an orphan; we took him in, because the wide world is no place for such a small child on his own."

"You don't know what happened to his family?"

"I assume there was some sort of conflict, and that contributed to either their dying, or his separation from them. As to what specifically happened, well, Little Brother isn't talking. I don't even know his real name. We just call him Little Brother."

"Poor tyke." Tai Lung looked down at the little red panda and felt a tightening in his chest, and he didn't realize until that moment why he felt so attached to the child. Little Brother acted like he considered Tai Lung a father—_his_ father. Hadn't the snow leopard acted the same way around Shifu during his childhood? Hadn't he worshipped his 'Baba' as all little boys were supposed to, and looked up to him with such undying adulation and uninhibited belief that he was infallible and unbreakable? Tai Lung caught himself wondering if that was how his own son would be…following his father around, mirroring his every move, making a running jump and hugging him every time he saw his baba and emulate him in every possible way? The last thought made him shudder…recalling his own sins and the awful punishment they had led to. No, that would only happen to his son over his own dead body.

"For his sake, I hope Little Brother never makes the mistakes I did." The snow leopard paused, then rested his elbows on his knees. "Looking back, I know I deserved to go to prison."

"And the fact that you realize this is proof enough that you are reformed. I admit you are a perplexing man, Tai Lung. Just when I think I have you figured out, you surprise me."

"How do you mean?" Tai Lung asked, turning to look at the old master. "I'm still arrogant—"

"I think 'overconfident' is a fairer measure of your personality. Not that I blame you—not entirely. True, you are very gifted and talented in kung fu, so you have good reason to be confident in your abilities. But pride is the downfall of the greatest general, and the ruin of the most exalted emperor. I'm told Death is the great equalizer…but I believe Pride is far greater."

"But being proud of your accomplishments is a good thing," Tai Lung argued.

"And I agree with you there," Sun Bear said. "It is good to be aware of your talents—it is in our natures to desire to be good at something. But when you begin to get boastful…"

He stopped when Little Brother stirred and whimpered in his sleep. Sun Bear tucked the blankets tighter around the cub in a shockingly paternal way. Tai Lung, certainly, had never expected the old master to show anything more than distant concern for anyone under his command. To see this great master leaning over a crying child and offering comfort as only a grandfatherly figure could changed quite a few of the snow leopard's perceptions.

Sun Bear gestured to him and they both left the cell. He beckoned Tai Lung again, who followed, feeling slightly wary. He'd learned early on from Po that when Sun Bear wanted to speak to them alone, he was usually digging for information that they weren't willing to give.

Sun Bear led him to a courtyard Tai Lung had never seen before, where in the middle of a bare garden stood a giant elongated boulder lying on its back. Sun Bear approached it, bowed reverently to it, then ran his hand over the smooth façade. "This rock has been here since the temple was built. This is the site of the original pagoda—it burned down about five centuries ago. This altar is the only thing that's left of it."

"Why not rebuild the pagoda in the same spot?" the snow leopard asked.

"It burned down," Sun Bear said. "The monks took that as a sign that the Phoenix was unhappy with its location, so they moved—"

"But isn't that the point of the phoenix legend?" Tai Lung reasoned. "It bursts into flames when it dies, but it doesn't come back to life in some other place. It comes back to life in the same place where it died. If they were going to rebuild the pagoda, it should've been built right here."

Sun Bear froze, staring in mute shock at the ancient altar as this point of view sank in. And when it did, it proved just how caught off-guard he was: "Well, I'll be damned."

Tai Lung had no small measure of satisfaction in responding with: "Three _fen_."

Sun Bear sent him a nasty look, but sighed and relented. "Fine, but in lieu of my contributing to the Swear Jar, how about I dock three _fen_ off your tab?"

"Double or nothing."

"Done."

"You're being rather agreeable today," the snow leopard said suspiciously. "Are the planets in retrograde? Some sort of alignment I've missed? I know there hasn't been an eclipse."

"I'll ignore your sarcasm if you follow a single order."

"All right…" the feline warily agreed.

Sun Bear pointed at the altar. "Try breaking this rock in two halves."

"…That's it?"

"That's it."

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"I said no. It's _never_ that simple with you—you always have an agenda!"

"Tai Lung, just hit the damn rock!" he snapped. Then he paused, and grunted in annoyance. "If you'll ignore my outburst, I'll knock six more _fen_ off your tab."

While still dubious of his intentions, Tai Lung stepped up to the altar and held his fist directly over the stone. Taking a deep breath and letting out a mighty roar, he slammed his fist into the rock—

Sun Bear hesitated, then relented, "Go ahead, I won't penalize you."

—and the feline let out a string of strong, hot-blooded curses as he nursed his aching hand. "I knew it!" he accused. "I _knew_ there was a catch!"

Sun Bear sighed raggedly and approached the snow leopard. "You expected a catch, and here it is: No matter how many times you hit that rock, it will not crumble."

"I broke my hand so you could impart _that_? You sodding _bastard_!"

"I'll grant you that one, I deserve it; but I must emphasize that you cannot expect satisfaction from achieving something that is impossible."

"Nothing is impossible, isn't that what you said?" Tai Lung said, still nursing his aching hand, now throbbing with white-hot pain. "I can turn that rock to gravel if I wanted to; I've done it before to much larger rocks than that! Anything is possible."

"Perhaps, but not by mortal hands." The old bear came to stand next to the feline and peered into his face. "Gods help you," he suddenly chuckled, "you're a perfectionist."

"That's a good thing," Tai Lung growled, still nursing his throbbing hand. "I don't know why people make such a big deal of it! I'd rather be a perfectionist than a slacker!"

"So you'd rather spend your life reaching for something that can never be, only to be disappointed each time you fail? When the alternative is to keep your expectations low, so that when you surpass them, you can rejoice in them?"

"I was always told that having low expectations was a bad thing."

"Then your teachers were all full of snot."

Tai Lung gaped at the old bear, who snorted. "People who strain to accomplish impossible goals will never be truly content, and people who measure their own self-worth based on terms of productivity and accomplishment are, frankly, the most miserable kinds of people I know."

"I'm not miserable."

"Are you not? Since you got here, I have noticed high rates of anxiety, depression, and obsessive behaviors; and your narcissistic tendencies barely require mention."

"Well of course I'm anxious," the feline snapped. "I'm miles away from my very pregnant wife, there's some bloke who's out to destroy everything I hold dear, and I can't figure out the kung fu you're trying to teach!"

Sun Bear used his staff to gently coax Tai Lung away from the stone altar. "Forgetting kung fu for a moment…you don't make a career of kung fu, do you?"

"No," he paused. "I'm a cook…chef," he swiftly corrected.

"Hm, interesting," the bear nodded. "Going from a destroyer to a creator—quite a drastic career change. Are you any good?"

Tai Lung smirked, "I can make the best crab wontons in China."

"Careful of that ego—I don't think your head can stand to get any bigger."

"Don't believe me?"

"I believe you—that's perhaps the first boast I've heard from you in three weeks. Were you truly arrogant, I would've known the first day. Do you strive to be perfect in that as well?"

"Of course—people expect perfection in taste and presentation…"

"…Despite the fact that it all ends up in the same place anyway."

"Are you demeaning my work?" the snow leopard demanded.

"I'm keeping you realistic. Surely you know that there is no such thing as perfection—it is a myth. Now I'm more curious as to who taught you such habits?"

The answer was obvious, of course, but Tai Lung wasn't willing to play the blame game…

Oh who the hell was _he_ kidding?

"Shifu, he taught me to be perfect in everything I do. Anything less would be disgraceful."

"Moron," Sun Bear snorted. "You can tell him I said that."

"He'll be thrilled to hear it, I'm sure."

"Undoubtedly; I'm certain he tried to be a perfect parent too. The problem is…what?" he probed.

Tai Lung warily answered, "…Perfection doesn't exist?"

"Good. And whenever you strive for perfection, what happens?"

"You…fail?"

"You _fail_, miserably, heartbreakingly, and all-out disgracefully."

"Not one to mince words, are you?"

"To call him a failure as a parent is erroneous," Sun Bear continued as though he hadn't heard him. "Because you still turned out alright…well, you could have turned out worse. So take a lesson from his mistakes, not just your own. Don't try to be perfect…just try to be good."

"But 'good enough' is never _good enough_, and 'almost' only ever gets you 'almost'."

Swiftly losing his patience, Sun Bear whacked him on the side of the head. "NO. I am putting my foot down, right now. As your master—for I _am_ your master now, Heaven help us both!—I _order_ you to stop trying to achieve perfection!"

Rubbing his head, the snow leopard snapped, "So what do you want from me?"

"I want you to be _happy_, you idiot!"

He was struck speechless by this confession, and had he the ability to speak, Tai Lung was sure he wouldn't have known what to say in the first place. Sun Bear cleared his throat and continued his lesson:

"I want you to be happy. As I stated, measuring your worth by your accomplishments will _never_ make you happy. Let go of that, _let go_ of those expectations, and _let go_ of those impossible goals. How can I help you if you won't help yourself? And how can you help yourself if you don't allow yourself to grow? Your perfectionism is holding you back. Remember that self-made prison I told you about?"

"You're saying my perfectionism is that prison?"

"Precisely. Let it go. Once you do, you'll be amazed how free you feel..."

He was abruptly interrupted when someone called for him from the cloisters: "Master Sun Bear! We need you in the pagoda!"

Sun Bear rolled his eyes and turned to look at First Brother. The old bear replied with strained patience, "Can this wait, First Brother? I am in the middle of something."

Tai Lung noticed the old lion was ashen-faced, and looked harried and concerned. "A thousand apologies," the lion said, "But Master, this needs your immediate attention."

The old master suddenly picked up on the lion's apprehension. "What's wrong?"

First Brother glanced at Tai Lung, then back to his master, "I'm not certain that...well, present company being..."

Sun Bear looked back at Tai Lung, then responded, "Tell me on the way. Tai Lung, stay here, perform some _tao lu _and practice your yoga until I get back. Fifty Sun Salutations until then, then do whatever you want. I will come get you before supper." Then he gathered his robes and staff and marched over to First Brother and quickly muttered, "Lead the way..."

Tai Lung waited until the old bear had left the courtyard before walking up to the abandoned altar. He intended to practice his forms and stretches, but not before examining the altar closer. It was cracked in places, crumbling at the corners, but that didn't change anything. He felt something here. He had felt something since walking into the monastery in the first place. There was energy here, but nothing like _chi_, nothing like any vibe he had ever felt. There was—for lack of better word—magic here.

He placed his hands palms down onto the altar, feeling something—warmth—seeping into his hands. It wasn't hot, but to his astonishment, the stone was not cool at all. Even more astonishing, the hand he had used to punch the rock was no longer hurting. He pulled away and stared at his hands in the dying light. They were…glowing.

_What the devil is going on?_

The wind suddenly picked up in the courtyard, and he heard…singing. The same singing as in the secret tunnel, the night before, the same singing from the crypt, now weaving in and out, echoing in the cloisters. It got louder, and a whoosh of air behind him made him jump and whirl around. The singing abruptly stopped.

"Hello?" he called, his eyes warily scanning the courtyard, his voice echoing off the walls and cloisters. No one greeted him, and the silence was oppressive. Then he felt his fur standing on end…and that he was being watched. Slowly he turned, looking over his shoulder, and froze.

He felt both excited and dreadful, winded but that he could breathe for the first time. He doubted his eyes could truly see what he was seeing. Perched on the altar, it had the head and wings of a pheasant, the body of a mandarin duck, the long legs of a crane and the trailing tail of a peacock. Its feathers glimmered like gold and rubies, and behind its eyes burned a heated soul, passionate and firm, and the fire in its eyes reminded him so much of the occasions he had seen that fire in his own reflection.

The phoenix lowered its head in a slight bow, and when it straightened to fix the feline with a straightforward stare, Tai Lung could hardly move, let alone breathe. A beatific smile spread across its beak and a feminine voice responded to his shock:

_Welcome home, Phoenix Warrior.

* * *

_

"Now tell me, what's going on?" Sun Bear demanded in the secret hall. First Brother shadowed him, and the lion was absolutely beside himself as they reached the Northern Pagoda:

"We've been robbed: the statue of the Sacred Bird is gone!"

Sun Bear stopped short in his shock, causing First Brother to bump into him. "Gone? How could it be gone?"

"It vanished! The altar boys said it was there this morning when they laid offerings, but when they came for noon prayers, the statue was gone! I fear to implicate anyone in this crime..."

"It isn't a crime," Sun Bear whispered. "Has anyone touched the altar since its discovery?"

"No, sir. Why? Sir!" First Brother called when Sun Bear broke into a run. The lion stumbled after him, but for his age, the old master was remarkably fast. He reached the upper courtyard and crossed it, marching straight up the pagoda stairs and into the inner sanctum. He brushed right past Brothers Two through Five, ignoring their questions as he strode straight up to the altar. As surely as First Brother described, the magnificent statue of the Phoenix was gone. The box containing the prophetic scroll was still there, but in the place of the statue was something far more remarkable.

His breath caught in his throat, and if he could have died of shock, it was certainly a shock well worth it! The old bear reverently came forward and gently picked up the sacred relic and ran his fingers over it. Breathless, he held it up for the other senior monks to see.

The five seniors collectively gasped and immediately sank to their knees in worship.

The golden feather in Sun Bear's hand was glowing. He stared at it, but didn't see it; his mind was elsewhere, thinking that for the first time in hundreds of years, the Phoenix had finally spoken to him again. This was one of the signs, he knew, all a part of the prophecy. He thought he would never live long enough to see this day...perhaps just as Oogway believed he would never see the day he named his own successor. This golden feather was proof, undeniable proof, to the old bear that his time was quickly coming to an end. Whether Sun Bear - or Tai Lung - was ready or not, the time had come. _She_ had decided it was so.

* * *

Okay, a few more references...Sun Bear's "Why are you so concerned with twenty posts when you can only stand on one?" is a quote from one of my favorite books: "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" by Christopher Moore; I HIGHLY recommend it! The flames in the crypt actually wasn't inspired by National Treasure, but by Indiana Jones (I can't remember which movie it was, though).

All of the mysticism and "history" are mostly from my research and creative license, respectively. My conclusions on the special abilities are purely based on my own brand of logic...if it can be called that /shrug/

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope to have another chapter up soon.


	12. Chapter 12:One Month Before the Solstice

Hullo again! Fortunately for you all, I have at least one full chapter to post after this one. Chapter 13 will be a doozy, and so will Chapter 14, just fair warning. Chapter 13 is going through some major editing, so don't expect it for a while, mostly because I've been terribly busy at work and at home. I promise not to take so long to update this time!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, that belongs to Dreamworks Animation. All OCs are my intellectual property and should not by used without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 12: One Month Before the Solstice

* * *

The past month had been especially hard for Mei Xing. Now eight months along a high-risk pregnancy, her husband gone far away for...heaven only knew how long, with the threat of a war on the horizon, and the even greater worry that he was the target of bounty hunters and soldiers alike, had done little to settle her nerves. Her sewing lay abandoned, to be picked up by Auntie Wu later, because Mei Xing had snapped the thread too many times from nerves. She had picked up knitting needles again and had furiously began knitting another baby blanket. Since she had gotten up that cold late autumn morning, she had noted with worry that there was a thick veil of frost on the ground and lining the dying leaves that still held a death grip to their branches.

Since discovering her pregnancy, she had made over a dozen small baby booties in as many colors as she could find, with matching sweaters. She now had three different blankets, and was working on a fourth. Halfway through, she had to set the knitting needles down to rub her hand over her stomach. Another cramp; she hoped and prayed it wasn't a contraction, even though she rationally knew it wasn't, that it was still too early. She rubbed at the jade pendant around her neck, sure that she would worry away the stone within the month at the rate she was going.

She couldn't sleep any more. She hated the bed now. And apparently, so did baby. Every time Mei Xing tried to lie down and get some rest as her doctor ordered her to, the baby would kick and tumble in her womb until she sat up or took a walk around the room. This was _definitely_ her husband's child, she thought ruefully. He couldn't stand being bored, either. Not that Mei Xing was any better.

Palms pressed against the small of her back, she dragged her swollen feet around the room, taking deep breaths as she walked… _Waddled_, she thought scornfully. _I'm as big as a house—I'm waddling worse than a mother duck with ducklings in tow._ The female snow leopard stopped and looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. Eight months along…and gods, she was huge! She never remembered being this big for any other pregnancies… _Which means this kid's probably going to rip me apart on his way out,_ she thought as she placed her hand on her stomach; the baby responded by moving a little, and she smiled a little bit. _This isn't anything like it was before. Your in-laws care about you, you've got friends now, and they don't want you to die…_

"_Did you kill another one?_"

Her breath caught in her throat and she choked. Mei Xing looked back in the mirror and remembered she was alone…which meant her memories were creeping back. She had to take her mind off it, immediately. She spied a basket of clean laundry in the corner. She waddled over as fast as her body allowed and lifted the basket onto the bed, clothes and sheets spilling out onto the quilt she had made specifically for her wedding bed. She began folding, focusing too much concentration on the act.

"_Did you kill another one?_"

Mei Xing looked at the bed and saw herself there, six years ago, weak, pale and still bleeding. _The healer was throwing bloodied rags in a basket then laid a cool cloth over her forehead. Grandmother-in-law sat on her other side, holding her hand while tears poured down the young female's cheeks. The old snow leopardess turned to the door and shot back, "Maybe if you got off her once in a while, she'd carry one to term!"_

_From the door, he sniffed, "What's the point of marrying a peasant if she doesn't have babies? Every farm wife I've seen has lots of children; what's your excuse, Mei Xing?"_

"_It's your own damn fault for beating her, you damned idiot!" the old woman snarled. "I can see where I went wrong: I married in your mother! Yes, __**you**__, you worthless harpy! See what you've done, poisoning my grandson with your filth?"_

"_The only poison I see," Mei Xing's mother-in-law disdainfully replied, "Is marrying in __**that**_ _girl." She had never used her name. To her, Mei Xing was either "Girl" or "That Girl". "This is your punishment for marrying below you, son! A worthless, childless whore!"_

"_Get out," Mei Xing weakly said. The healer and Grandmother glanced at her, but neither spoke. Before her mother-in-law and husband could berate her, she grabbed the oil lamp on the nightstand and threw it at the door. "GET OUT!"_

"Get out…"

"Sorry, I can come back later and _why in Hell's name aren't you in bed_?" Sonam roared. The old snow leopard stormed into the room and tore the sheet from Mei Xing's nerveless hands. "We've been _over_ this, Mei Xing! You're not supposed to work!"

"So what, I'm supposed to sit around and be worthless?" she snapped back. Fury in her eyes, she shrieked at him, "Is that what you want from me, to sit around and do nothing so you have an excuse to tell me what a horrible wife and mother I am?"

Sonam caught himself just in time; he stepped back and fully assessed the situation. Mei Xing was out of bed. She was folding laundry. She had a haunted, faraway look in her eyes...a look he knew as the Thousand-Yard Stare. She thought he was calling her a bad wife... "Oh no," he groaned, shaking his head. "You know, my offer is still open…"

"What offer?"

"I'm very good at making things look like accidents. Or suicides. It depends. I'm rather looking for a traditional suicide at this point, as it gives me leave to be a bit more violent. An accident would be so _impersonal_, and you know me, I like leaving a personal touch."

"What—Sonam, are you talking about murdering my ex-husband?"

"Just for you, I'll give a seventy-five percent discount..."

"_NO_!" she snapped.

"Right, tell you what," he continued like a salesman knowing he was losing a pitch. "I'll stage it to look like he stabbed himself, but only if you promise to get back to bed to rest."

"I can't sleep anymore, godsdammit!" she shrieked at him, and in one breath, cried: "I'm as big as a house, I only have one dress that fits anymore, my feet hurt, my back hurts, and every time I try to sit or lie down, this little brat keeps kicking me until I start walking again! And if I have to eat one more bowl of noodles I'm going to _hurl_!"

Sonam took a deep breath and another step back. "All right. All right, how's this, I help you with the folding? You still get to do something, only I help in case you need it or get tired."

Mei Xing thought about it, then slowly nodded as her temper abated. "Okay. Okay, that's fine... You know, there was only one time I talked back to him that he didn't beat me."

Sonam held his silence and allowed her to continue.

"It was my last miscarriage before my Grandmother-in-law died; after she died, he got even more brutal, and it wasn't too long after that I ran away. He and his mother said horrible things to me the day of that miscarriage. I had been six months along when I lost it; and y'know, every time I miscarried or whatever, he'd tell me I 'killed another one'. Isn't that nice? I don't know why I did it, but when he said it that time…I threw a lit oil lamp at his head. It shattered on the doorjamb, but it splattered him and my mother-in-law with hot oil. I just wanted them to hurt like I was hurting… For some reason he never beat me for that, and my mother-in-law never mentioned it."

Sonam smirked proudly at her. "Did I tell you Nima threw a chair at me once, when she was pregnant?"

Mei Xing had overheard the conversation he'd had with Wu earlier that month, but feigned ignorance. "No. What happened?"

"I told her she looked like a fat cow."

"You _what_?"

"I meant it as a joke! …'Course, _she_ wasn't laughing."

"No kidding. But she threw a _chair_?"

"Eight months along, and she threw a whole bloody rocking chair. In hindsight, I'm lucky she _only_ threw a chair. She had been sharpening a bunch of kitchen knives at the time, and could've thrown them instead. I avoided her for a few hours until she forgave me. But I learned my lesson: never piss off a pregnant woman."

"I thought your overall lesson was to never piss off women, period."

"And I shall amend that by telling you what I told my son as the ultimate commandment to a lasting marriage: 'Thou shalt not piss off the source of thy nookie'."

Mei Xing laughed. "You didn't really tell him that, did you?"

He grinned proudly, "Damn straight I did! I also told him the same wisdom my father told me: Always answer her with 'yes, dear', and when you bugger something up, always—_always_—respond with 'I'm sorry, love. I don't know what I was thinking. It will never happen again.' And he was right!"

"Did that all work?"

"Saved my sorry hide more than once, I'll tell you that!"

She grinned and laughed, and he chuckled too, remembering the brief time he had with the love of his life. "Gods, I loved that woman…and what a woman! And, if it's not overstepping boundaries to say, I know for a fact my boy inherited his old cat's good taste!"

Mei Xing blushed. "You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"The hell I am. Nima was a wonderful woman. She would've loved you, I know; the two of you would've been thick as thieves, had she lived."

"Do you think Tai Lung would've turned out differently if you'd raised him?"

Sonam fell silent, but Mei Xing wasn't sure if it was because of concentration on the supposedly difficult task of folding sheets, or if he was actually thinking about it. "Well," he began, "He'd probably have still gone to prison for something or another. He's got a temper, which is his parents' fault, of course," he said with a wink from his good eye. "But…I guess all things considered…" he paused, then let out a sigh. "Though I give him a fair bit of ribbing, Shifu did a good job raising him. He only wanted for him what I would've wanted. No parent is perfect, Mei Xing, so don't try to be perfect…just try to be good."

"That shouldn't be too hard," she snorted. "I got plenty of examples of what not to do. My dad was hard on my brothers too. When we had a bad growing year, he blamed them for not working hard enough and shaming our ancestors."

"How'd he treat your mum?"

Mei Xing fell silent, having just finished folding some blankets. "He…she, I mean, they had their moments…" She hesitated, then stacked the blankets with some towels for the linen closet. "Every marriage has them, I suppose. They fought the most about food and money. Mostly food. Mom was a good cook, I mean, she was able to make a filling meal from rice, onions, and over-ripe carrots and nothing else; that takes a lot of skill. The only rebellions she ever had against him was when he complained about her cooking…she'd tell him 'either eat it, make it yourself, or go hungry'."

She sighed and sat down, suddenly feeling drained…though from standing too long or the subject of their conversation, she didn't know. "I'm lucky, I realize that. This is the first time I've ever lived in a truly supportive home. I've always felt like I should have existed in another time, another world…"

"You and everyone else in this house," Sonam said.

"True."

"And it makes sense we support each other, doesn't it?" he pondered as he finished the folding. "No one else would put up with our shenanigans, so we depend on each other. Every last member of our 'family' is an outcast of some type. We're individuals, we're different from other people…and so what? It makes us more fun."

She smiled a little. "I guess so." She sighed. "I miss him."

"I know. Me too." After a momentary pause, Sonam suddenly remembered, "Damn, _that's _what I wanted to show you! I finished the nursery."

Mei Xing grinned. "That's great! Mind if I see it?"

"Are you feeling up to it?"

"I'll be using it in a month anyway, right?" she asked, taking a moment to stand. She allowed him to escort her across the hall to the room that, until now, had been used for storage. Now, it had been transformed. Crane had offered to paint murals after the plaster and whitewash had dried, and now Mei Xing saw paintings of little baby animals of all types…but most prominently tiger and snow leopard cubs. Heavy curtains hung over the shuttered window to keep the cold out. Currently there were two cribs, each carefully handmade by Sonam, who had also constructed a cradle for his first grandchild.

He had stepped back to allow Mei Xing to look around. "I made a cradle for you to keep in your room—you'll want to keep the baby close by until his first year. As for the room, sure, nothing fancy, but I figure how much do you need until—are you alright?"

Mei Xing sniffed and nodded, turning back to look at him. There were tears in her eyes…but she was smiling. "Yeah…yeah, I'm fine." No one had done something like this for her, ever. She doubted her ex would have spared the expense to devote an entire room to a nursery, even if he desired as many sons as possible. She had, for the most part, been largely ignored and rejected for the majority of her life. Now she had a father-in-law who cared enough to make her a cradle and crib, little wooden toys for her child, and who took over chores she was no longer able to do. She had a husband who carefully watched her diet to make sure she ate enough, and then some, who would lie in bed with her at night and run his hand over her growing stomach and smile proudly at her, a husband who told her he loved her...and he meant it. She had dear friends who acted as her siblings, a "brother" who would protect her and his family at the cost of his own life, and a "sister" who looked after her health even when Mei Xing was ignoring it. She was blessed, and she knew it.

She cried a little harder when Sonam hugged her, and though he tried to shush her, calm away her tears in a way her father never had, that didn't calm her down. Now that everything was coming together, now that everything was ready for the baby's arrival, Mei Xing wished it was her husband she was hugging. She wished she could share this with him.

Sonam finally pulled away and held her at arm's length. "It'll be night, soon. I've started a fire in the common room, so lets go get you settled there, I'll bring you up some dinner..." he paused, then said, "Stir fry, I'm thinking."

"Good call," Mei Xing said as she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. "Mind if I grab my knitting from the bedroom? I need to finish that blanket..."

Not bothering to point out that she had made enough clothes and blankets for a whole damn litter of cubs, Sonam only nodded and said, "I'll grab it for you. Do you need me to pick up more wool for you tomorrow?"

"I should have enough, but thanks." She allowed him to lead her into the common room, and set her in her rocking chair right in front of a warm fire. He disappeared for a moment only to bring her the blanket-in-progress, then made for the stairs. Su Lin was coming up just as he was going down, the female panda holding fast to a bag of sweet ginger cookies, a favorite snack. The panda caught Mei Xing's look and scowled, "Okay, fine, I'm cheating on my diet. Sue me."

Mei Xing shrugged. "Like I'm going to judge?"

"Point." Su Lin said, offering the snow leopard a cookie, then drew chair closer to the fire and took a blanket from the linen closet. "Sonam getting you dinner?"

"Yup."

"Not more soup, I hope. I heard your threat earlier."

"About the hurling? Did anyone else hear that?"

"Yes, the whole restaurant."

"Great," the snow leopardess said, not too enthusiastically as she nibbled on the cookie.

Su Lin wrapped the blanket tightly around her and settled next to her in front of the fireplace. After a long silence, she spoke up, "I hope Po and Tai Lung are okay. You know, warm enough, well fed..."

"Me too." Mei Xing paused, looking into the fire, then down at the blanket slowly materializing from her fingers and wooden needles. She focused too much on the pattern she was creating. _Row nine: knit five, yarn over, knit five, purl one, knit five, yarn over, slip one stitch, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over the knit two together, yarn over...and repeat from first yarn over until the last ten stitches of the row, knit five, yarn over, knit five...then next row: knit five, purl until the last five stitches, knit five._ The stitching resembled candle flames...or something, she couldn't remember. All the yarn overs formed little holes in the knitting that, when spaced correctly, formed the pattern in a series of full stitches and eyelets. She had made a shawl, once, with this same stitch pattern; it had been ingrained in her head since her first marriage, where she memorized patterns like these to help her cope with the constant fear of beatings and death...

_Some people memorize sutras, I memorize knitting. I'm probably going to hell._

"The blanket looks beautiful, Mei," Su Lin said. "I especially like the mix of blue and red in the yarn color."

"Yeah, that was a dyeing mistake. Its pretty though. If its a boy, I hope he doesn't mind a purple blanket."

Su Lin made a face. "Why should he? His baba wore purple pants for a good twenty years..."

"Aren't you glad we smacked some fashion sense into him?"

The panda giggled and smirked at her friend, "I know _you _were glad to burn those pants once I got him into new clothes."

Mei Xing smirked back. "I _did _tell you that it turned the fire green, didn't I? I don't want to think of how long he wore those without cleaning them _once_."

"I've got it on good authority he didn't want to think of it either. You two are a lot alike; its eerie how well you two seem to know each other, like you've known each other your whole lives instead of just a couple years." After she stared into the fire a little longer, Su Lin finally cleared her throat and said, "This may seem silly, but I used to look down on love matches like yours...like a lot of people from my home village...now, I'm not so sure."

"Don't tell me we corrupted you," Mei Xing teased, counting stitches under her breath.

Su Lin wrinkled her nose at the snow leopardess. "No...but I've seen how successful love matches can be. So many people in this valley are married because of love, not arranged marriages. It makes me wonder what my mama would think if she had come here to settle."

The panda sighed, pulled her knees up to her chest and sighed. "Why didn't she just run when Jiao threatened her? She...she'd already hidden her best books and scrolls in a safe place outside the house. I think she honestly meant to get away from there before he showed up... Mama wasn't afraid of any man, but she was afraid of what they were capable of. I used to think there was a difference, but I realize now that there really isn't."

Mei Xing ran her hand over her stomach again, staring into the flames. "I believe it. I wasn't so much afraid of my ex as I was about what he'd do to me. To a point, I still fear what he can and would do to me. Tai Lung being gone...its only done more damage to my nerves than anything. I'm vulnerable right now, I can't fight for myself, and sometimes I want to be alone and yet hate being alone, because that leaves me open to attack."

"Mei-Mei, no one's going to attack you. This is a safe place," the panda reminded her.

"I know, I know, its an irrational fear...a lot of my thoughts have been irrational lately."

"Hormones?"

"I guess," she said noncommittally. Mei Xing's eyes strayed to her friend's, then down to the panda's feet. "You know...I can't believe I never asked you this, but you grew up in a pretty conservative area, right?"

"Right."

"Why didn't your mother ever bind your feet?"

Su Lin actually smiled and snorted with laughter. "Gods, I never told you that story?" she beamed proudly, "My mama was a very practical woman. Women used to ask her all the time why she never bound my feet or my sister's. She would always say 'Why should I cripple my daughters? Why should I do that? They are more useful to me and their future husbands if they can walk!' She didn't appreciate beautiful things for beauty's sake; it always had to have a purpose. She used to see what that practice did to women, how they lived every day in agony. She said the binding weakened women, and then weakened any children born to them. So when rich people complained to her that their son was sickly, she'd tell them, smart as you like, 'Well its your own darn fault!'"

"I think I like your mom."

The panda smirked and picked up some of the snow leopard's discarded sewing and began embroidering bats for good luck onto the baby's clothes. "Mama was very practical. Really methodical, too. She was a neat-freak, everything had a place, always. _Always_. Papa used to say she was more organized than the Emperor's entire council, and used to tease her that she alone could keep the empire in line. Of all the arranged marriages in the village, theirs was by far the happiest. Most of the men didn't like Mama because she was so outspoken, but they never suggested to Papa to rein her in."

"It sounds like he wouldn't've dared. I wonder why there's such a difference between how men behave, like how some are like your dad or Sonam, and others are like my ex?"

"Mama said it boils down to how secure a man feels, and how controlling he is. 'Su Lin,' she told me, 'No matter who you marry, you must never marry a man with insecurities or one who is very controlling'. She said insecure men take it out on whoever they think is weaker than they are. So I don't know if it helps," the panda said as she looked over at her friend, "But I think that your Headman...was actually _afraid _of you."

Mei Xing make a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. "Afraid...of _me_? So why'd he beat me so damn much?"

"If you were anything then like you are now, I bet he was intimidated by how you acted. Face it, you don't take crap from Tai Lung, and even less crap from Sonam, and they're easily the scariest felines in the empire."

"Su, its impossible. He beat me because...I don't know. I guess there were a lot of reasons."

"No," the panda said firmly, "There were a lot of _excuses_. Big difference."

Mei Xing thought about it, again rubbing at the jade pendant around her neck as a way to comfort herself. "He didn't start really beating me until I miscarried the first time," she said after a pause. "I shouted at him that the miscarriage wasn't my fault, then he beat the hell out of me." Mei Xing had started staring into the flames, but rather than the thousand-yard stare that usually fell across her eyes while recalling her past marriage, Su Lin saw something...spark...in the other female's eyes.

"He beat me because I miscarried...but how did he know that the beatings weren't causing the miscarriages in the first place? He was wrong. The whole damn time, he was wrong. It _wasn't _my fault..." Mei Xing said, a hard edge in her voice. Her spotted paw tightly gripped the jade pendant around her neck so hard, Su Lin thought it might shatter like glass in her grip. "It was _not _my fault...so why the fuck did he treat it like it was?"

"Because he was under pressure to produce offspring, and hadn't?" Su Lin offered. But she saw something glimmer in her friend's eyes, recognition, and quite alarmingly, anger.

"He _was _afraid of me..." Mei Xing said, halfway believing it, but starting to see it for what it really was. "He was trying to break my spirit. He didn't like not being in control, so he tried to break me, just like Tai's guards tried-" she stopped herself just in time and glanced at Su Lin.

Su Lin held up a hand. "Don't worry about it. I don't know, I don't care to know. Its in the past and can't be changed."

"No..." Mei Xing said haltingly, still horrified she had almost revealed her husband's deepest secret. "I think you _do _know."

"You mean the scars?" the panda asked. "The scars his fur usually hides? Yes, I've seen them. I don't know that anyone else has." She paused. "Its none of my business, and I won't say anything if you don't want me to. I just think..."

"What?"

"I just think he should try talking about it, like what you're doing. This is the most we've ever heard you talking about your ex, and I wish you'd told us sooner. But just the same, if talking about it is helping you...think how much it'll help him."

"He's not going to talk," Mei Xing said. "He's too stubborn." She paused. "How much do you really know?"

Su Lin's brown eyes locked with the snow leopard's amber ones. "I know enough to keep it a secret until he wants it revealed. That's the point of secrets like these: they're no one's business but ours until we decide to share. I know he's told you and Sonam; I don't think he's told Po."

"Why wouldn't he? Those two are like brothers, inseparable," Mei Xing pointed out, gently worrying the jade pendant. "Of all people, he'd tell his best friend, wouldn't he?"

Their conversation was interrupted when Sonam came back to deliver Mei Xing's dinner. The females swiftly changed topics to discourage the elder from inquiring into their weird moods. But Mei Xing knew he noticed how subdued she looked, how troubled. She worried the jade pendant more than usual, her thumb nearly rubbing another hole into it. For the rest of that uneventful night, however, Mei Xing could only guess how much Su Lin actually knew...and how much Po knew.

* * *

Shifu tried very hard to ignore his glowering wife's mutterings. He tried even harder to hide his own delight. He had been worried before, after the soldiers had left the Valley. He didn't like not knowing where Zang was heading, or what his plans were. He didn't like how silent the capital city was regarding Zang and his activities. He particularly didn't like not hearing from either Po or Tai Lung in nearly a month. He could have sent Zeng out to find them, but even he knew how dangerous that could be (and, the red panda figured, he had already endangered the poor bird too much).

Imagine his surprise, however, to discover that, against their better judgment, Zang and his men had returned to the Valley of Peace to seek medical assistance for their cadet. Shifu had reservations about inviting the war horse to reenter the Valley, but he knew an opportunity when he saw it...and promptly invited Captain Zang, Lieutenant Gao, Corporal Liu and the youth Quon to stay in the Jade Palace as honored guests while the tiger recuperated.

Wu Lien and the Furious Five were absolutely, well, furious to see Captain Zang Deshi back on their doorstep. Shifu could not have been happier. But he bit his tongue and graciously welcomed the soldiers back to the Valley, upon hearing of the unfortunate loss of their comrade, Sergeant Kong, and the injury of their youngest, Cadet Quon. Wu Lien - and the Furious Five - also bit back any comments, though Monkey and Mantis kindly offered their healing expertise in treating the cadet's injuries. Shifu went one step further and offered the soldiers all the comforts the Jade Palace had to offer "for their own safety", as he had put it.

To the red panda's credit, his offer was actually intended to keep them safe. Their interrogations around the village had not won them many friends, and if his suspicions were correct, the closer to the Jade Palace they were, the safer those soldiers would be from any type of retaliation. Kong's death was most certainly a retaliation.

"You don't give a damn about their safety," his wife bluntly told him later that evening. They sat together in their quarters, sharing a pot of tea. He had retreated to reading up on his kung fu scrolls, while she had resumed her old pastime of embroidery; she was making a baby jacket for little Shang, as he had quickly outgrown his old red festival clothes. Wu sipped her tea and placed the cup back down next to the lamp on the table. "I may not have known you my whole life, but lets face it, honey, you're a little too predictable."

"Lets hope _they _don't know that," Shifu muttered. He looked up from his scroll and glanced at her, then at the door. "I'm actually rather glad that they are here instead of out in the big wide world, where we can't track them as easily."

"So _that's _why you wanted to keep them here," she said evenly, but with a hint of aggression. The Jade Palace's Grand Master swiftly tried to quell her temper:

"Partly; keeping a close eye on them was certainly a consideration," he admitted. "But it is also my suspicion that perhaps Po and Tai Lung have unseen allies...with some rather unscrupulous means. Either way, Zang and his men will be safer here."

"What if they try to leave?"

"They won't. They want Tai Lung too much. But I must say," he said with a smirk, "Their odds _and _their timing suck. They waited until autumn to try and apprehend him, just the five of them, against a warrior who easily defeated one thousand guards? Tai Lung will be back before the Solstice, that much I know; he won't miss being here when he becomes a father. But by the time he does return, no one is leaving the valley until Spring."

"The snows will be too deep, and the weather on the bridge will be too treacherous." Wu froze, then glanced at her husband, who by now had given in and was grinning wildly. "...You paranoid old fool!" she admonished, but chuckled anyway. "You had planned on this!"

"Planned, no. _Hoped_, yes." He reached for his own teacup and said, "Zang will be trapped here until the spring equinox, and he knows it. He's already restless enough as it is. He knows he's in a tight spot, and that if he steps out of line, he has not just you and I, but all our students to answer to. He has to watch his back, and his manners, if he expects to bring Tai Lung to justice."

"And what of the emperor? Have you heard back?"

"Not yet. But rest assured I am going to keep a log of everything Zang does. He's brought his own rope, I just need to wait until he's got enough to hang himself."

Wu sighed and put her sewing down. "I don't like all this waiting. We know so very little, its making me uneasy."

"About Zang, or about Dalang?"

Wu scowled, and her answer told him that she was more concerned about the latter. "He knows who it is we're looking for, but he won't face it because it would mean facing himself. I don't know who it is, but I have my suspicions."

"Suspicions are enough to act on."

"Not this time. Believe me, I've tried to get him to open up, everything short of torture."

"And knowing your methods, I'm amazed he's not yet cracked."

"Why, do you think I am losing my touch?"

"Not at all," he said. "I believe this time around-if I may posit based on my own observations-for the first time in his life, he is not being hunted; he has a chance for a normal life, like anyone else. He wants to forget it and move on, and who could blame him? I don't think you are losing your touch, dearest, because a childhood with Jiao Shen for a father...it would have to be some horrible form of torture to get Dalang to talk."

Wu sighed and silently nodded, acquiescing the theory. She continued to sew for a while in silence, then paused mid-stitch, a thoughtful look on her face. Shifu noticed it, but waited patiently for her to say something. When she did, he was reminded that, though she loved him, and he her, she was still guarded about many things.

"He wasn't always the man we know today. As a teenager, he could be a right terror. I used some harsher methods to change him, to assimilate him to society...worse than what I used on Tai Lung to reform him. I'm afraid that in so doing...I may have inflicted more damage than I intended."

"Worse damage than Shen could have done?"

"I have a temper, darling, I know that," she said softly. "With Dalang, I allowed it to get the better of me, and it hurt him. I don't want to hurt him again. It took years to get him to trust me, and there are some days I wonder if he actually does trust me."

Shifu paused, then asked, "Do you think he would tell me if I asked him?"

She shook her head. "That is very doubtful. Shifu, he won't even tell his wife about that part of his life."

"Would Sonam have a chance?"

"Sonam. Who you had to literally twist his arm to tell you Tai Lung's real birth date and time? Sonam, get Dalang to talk. Right."

The Grand Master shrugged. "It was just a thought."

Wu sighed. "No, I'm afraid nothing short of a supernatural intervention is going to get him to open up."

* * *

If it was a supernatural intervention Auntie Wu wanted, that was most certainly what she got. Of course, Dalang did not quite know that. Yet. He had a feeling she was conspiring against him, but then, she was always conspiring against someone. In the meantime, the tiger chef kept his head down and focused on his work and his family. Tigress had gone with Viper and Su Lin to the old orchard for some training-Su Lin had complained of being out of shape, and the two female masters offered her some pointers. They had returned not too long ago, the female panda sporting a basketful of blackcurrants from the training grounds that had ripened quite nicely in their own little nook.

Baby Shang, carefully strapped into a special high chair at the table so he could watch his daddy cook, stared in fascination at the little dark purple berries that gleamed in the lantern light. The cub made little cooing noises and gummed his paw after Dalang had set a couple toys in front of his son to keep him occupied for a few more seconds. He turned back to see Shang reaching for the bowl of berries, then quickly pushed the bowl further out of the baby's reach. "No," he said gently, "Those aren't for you. Here, here's your little bunny. You want to play with Mr. Bun-Bun?"

Shang pouted, but accepted the stuffed bunny-rabbit anyway. Content that his son was sufficiently occupied, the chef turned away again to chop some vegetables. With Tigress not too far away, he didn't think twice when he heard something scraping across the tabletop...

He hadn't been sleeping well lately. He barely got four hours of sleep a night, and he worked hard all day in the restaurant, from opening to closing. It became harder to remember recipes he had created himself; Dalang prided himself on not relying on recipes to cook, but he kept going back to his notes, scribbled recipes on various pieces of paper, something he hadn't done since culinary school. He admitted he wasn't at the top of his game (and Mr. Ping had noticed it too), but the tiger knew he couldn't afford to take a day off now.

Something scraped across the tabletop behind him. Dalang looked over at his son's highchair…and looked again, feeling his stomach sink and then rise to his throat. Shang had gotten his hand on the bowl full of blackcurrants, and was happily plopping them into his mouth as he made little noises that sounded like words. Shang picked up another dark purple berry and smashed it into his mouth, repeating, "Ma, ma, ma, ma…" and "Ba, ba, ba, ba…", a fruitless effort to say his first word.

Ignoring the baby's glee, the tiger chef dropped everything and snatched the bowl away; Shang immediately started crying once his new plaything was taken from him. And Dalang immediately started panicking.

"Su—SU!" he screamed up the stairs as he plucked up his son. "Get your herbs, NOW!"

"What's wrong?" Tigress calmly asked as she walked back to the table.

"What's wrong?" Dalang demanded. "What's _wrong_? Did you see how many blackcurrants he ate?"

Tigress stared at him oddly. "Yes…he likes them."

"Tigress, they're _poison_! Almost everyone in my family is allergic to them!"

Her face immediately paled. "WHAT?"

"What's going on?" Su Lin asked as she poked her head into the room. "Why do you two look so pale?"

Dalang handed Shang to her. "He ate something he shouldn't—my whole family's allergic to blackcurrants, and he ate…I don't know how many!"

"Um…" she said, looking at the baby's vital signs with uncertainty.

Tigress was by now a nervous wreck. She paced the room and wrung her hands, "I should've known. I should've...No, _you_ should have told me!" she rounded on her husband. "If you were more open about these kinds of things, this wouldn't happen!"

"Oh no," he glared and snapped back. "Don't you dare turn this on me!"

"Um, guys?" Su Lin coughed.

Simultaneously, the tigers turned and snapped, "What?"

The female panda held the baby up by his underarms. "He's fine."

The two tigers just stared back at her, then stared at their son when he burped and grinned, dark purple berry juice staining his gums and cheeks.

"He's…fine?" Dalang asked. "But, the allergy…"

Su Lin shrugged and set the baby back down in his high chair, and wiped berry juice off his face and paws with a wet cloth. "Well, Tigress isn't allergic, are you?"

"No, of course not," she said. "That's why I didn't think it was a problem."

"And its _not_," Su Lin said, mostly towards Dalang, who looked ready to contest Tigress's claim. "It's perfectly fine. He can have blackcurrants. He might have a tummyache from eating too many, but other than that, he's going to be okay."

"Oh thank the gods," Tigress sighed with relief.

Dalang, however, still looked pensive. "Okay…he's okay." He didn't say anything when, to further illustrate her point, Su Lin pushed the bowl back towards the tiger cub, who squealed and reached his chubby little berry-stained paws out to get more berries. Dalang watched him carefully, as the baby clumsily put more of the dark purple berries in his mouth; Shang was as happy as…well, as a baby with a bowl of berries. But it was the faraway look in his eyes that suddenly drew Tigress's attention. "What's wrong?"

"Shang wasn't…"

"Shang wasn't what? Eating berries?"

"No, my brother Shang…he wasn't allergic." The tiger chef kept studying his son, looking for any clues or signs of an allergic reaction. "Shang was the only one in our family who wasn't allergic to blackcurrants."

"Oh thank you," she sarcastically replied. "If we'd known that, we could've tried _poisoning_ the Jiao instead of fighting them." She bit her tongue, realizing she was still bitter he hadn't told her, and she was still trying to calm herself down after fearing for her son's life. "Sorry."

"No, you're right. I should've told you. I'm sorry," he answered contritely.

"Anything else I ought to know?"

Dalang visibly thought about it, then smiled ironically. "Yeah, we're going to have to keep a short leash on him when he turns twelve."

"Why?"

"Trust me."

Still dubious of his guarded demeanor, Tigress let out a sigh of relief just as Mr. Ping waddled back into the kitchen. "Everything's fine," she told him.

"I heard yelling," the goose said fretfully. "And something about little Shang; are you sure everything is fine?"

"Yeah," Dalang answered. "Yeah, we're good. Just a misunderstanding, and me jumping the crossbow a bit."

"A _bit_?" Tigress snapped before she could stop herself. Knowing her husband was giving her a nasty look for her (admittedly) rude comment, she excused herself, citing a need to check on Mei Xing.

"Husbands and wives should not be like generals preparing for war," Mr. Ping told Dalang after Tigress was out of earshot. "Marriage is a partnership; you will not win by fighting each other."

Dalang suddenly snapped, "Ping, do us both a favor and don't stick your beak where it doesn't belong." With that, he turned back to the chopping block and started mincing garlic and ginger root. Mr. Ping kept his gaze on the tiger's back, and the goose knew that the tiger knew he was watching him. Dalang had never been so short with him, and that had the goose worried. Not as worried as seeing his employee wavering slightly in his stead, or the glazed look in the tiger's eyes, but he was worried just the same. But Ping wasn't about to try and order the tiger to take a break or a day off...at least not right now. So he let the comment slide, and silently returned to his work, knowing that Dalang would talk to him when he was ready.

The goose's silence said more than he knew. As soon as he'd turned away, Dalang knew he was out of line, but was too proud to admit he was wrong. He was too proud to apologize to his wife. He was too proud to apologize to his boss. And he was too much of a coward to tell anyone the truth about his past.

Having such deep introspective thoughts isn't generally advisable when using sharp knives, which was a lesson he learned the hard way when he felt was a slight tear in his skin, and a sharp pain followed by red blood blooming across his hand from where the knife had met its mark. Dalang hissed and quickly stifled a curse, jumping to grab a clean rag.

"What's wrong?" Mr. Ping asked.

"Sliced my hand open," Dalang gritted out, hissing more curses as blood drops splattered onto the kitchen floor. Neither of the cooks noticed that Baby Shang had gone completely silent in his highchair.

Dalang grabbed a clean rag from the table, dabbing at the small wound and pressing the cloth against it to get it to stop bleeding. Gritting his teeth and pursing his lips, the tiger chef looked down at his infant son, who was sitting completely still. The child's curiosity-filled expression soon crumpled into a grimace as a long, high wail erupted from his throat, so unexpectedly that Dalang was panicking more about his son's sudden mood swing than he was about his own injury.

"Shang, Shang, c'mon kiddo, what's wrong?" he asked, unintentionally reaching out with his injured hand. Shang visibly recoiled from the bloodied hand, shrieking louder, and making clumsy movements that made it look like the baby was trying to get away.

"What happened?" Tigress demanded as she rushed down the stairs. "Why's he cry—_what happened to your hand_?" she gasped when she saw the blood.

Dalang grabbed the rag again and pressed it to his injury, "Knife slipped, I picked up the rag, and Shang just started freaking out. I don't know what happened!"

Tigress quickly picked up her sobbing son, holding him to her chest and gently bouncing him in her arms as she shushed him. "It's okay, honey, its okay…shh, shh…you're okay, sweetie."

Dalang rushed over to the first aid kit and tore open the box, grabbing some gauze and a disinfectant salve. "When someone gets a chance, give me a hand or a wing?"

Mr. Ping lowered the heat on the stove and waddled over, bidding the other chef to sit at the table. "There, sit, sit, let me see to that…"

Tigress was still soothing the baby, whose cries had slowed, until tapering off as unexpectedly as they had begun. The tiger master gently caressed Shang's head until he lay his head on her shoulder, fat tears still running down his cheeks while quiet sobs still raked through his little body. "See? You're okay," she soothed. "There's no boo-boo, you're okay. Daddy's okay, too, isn't he?" she asked and looked over at her husband for confirmation, who winced as Ping applied the antiseptic salve.

"Yeah, Dada's real copacetic," he sarcastically replied. "I'll clean up the blood, Ping, don't worry about it."

"Just be more careful with those knives, young man," the goose scolded. "With business the way it is, I couldn't handle all the cooking alone if you seriously injured yourself!"

Tigress walked over, still bouncing the baby on her hip. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," he sighed. "I'm fine."

"No you're not." She gave him a worried look. "In all the time I've known you, you've _never _cut yourself by accident. Dalang, is something wrong?"

"I'm fine—really!" he said in answer to her dubious look. "Okay, so maybe I've been feeling a little out of it today, but Tigress, it's just _one_ day, okay?"

"You haven't been sleeping lately."

"So?"

She frowned. "What do you mean 'so'? I'm worried about you!"

"Tigress, I'm fine," he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his uninjured hand. "We've just been really busy. It'll die down soon, and I can get some rest then."

Tigress sighed and shook her head at him. "I just don't like you working so hard…that's something _I_ would do, not you."

"Tigress, sweetheart," he said, standing with a weary sigh. "Believe me, the last thing I'm going to do is work until I collapse. I've got more discipline than that."

Clearly doubting his claim, Tigress peered closer at him. "Maybe you should go rest, now. You look a little pale."

"I'm fine, just a little tired."

"Not to mention the blood loss."

"There wasn't that much blood. It's fine."

"Dalang, it's _not_ fine—go get some sleep. A short nap would do you some good. I'll wake you before the dinner crowd comes along, okay?"

He turned to look his wife in the eye and saw that she wasn't just ordering him around for the sake of it: she looked genuinely concerned.

"How pale do I look?"

"Like Po without the black patches over his eyes," she answered quickly.

Mr. Ping had turned at the mention of his son's name and froze, looking just as concerned for Dalang as Tigress did. The goose waddled over and looked up at his business partner imploringly. "Miss Tigress is right…you don't look well at all."

"I'm fine," he said stubbornly. He wavered a little bit and grabbed onto the tabletop to steady himself. "Maybe a little tired, but I'm fine…"

Now even little Shang was giving him a concerned look.

"Dalang…" Tigress said warningly.

"Okay, okay," he caved, his eyes squinting shut as he moved to the stairs. "Maybe…I think I should lie down…"

But when he got to the stairs, he froze, staring out at the entryway where the family altar stood. It may have been a trick of the light, or maybe his own fatigue causing a hallucination, but Dalang could have sworn he saw someone standing in front of the altar, their face trained up at his mother's portrait. Once the person was aware of his presence, he—for it was undoubtedly male—turned his dark-eyed gaze to him.

It was the last thing Dalang remembered before he blacked out.

* * *

"Okay, good training today; really good, actually. You did a lot better than I expected."

"Okay, that's good."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm peachy."

"So what are you doing lying on the ground?"

"Bleeding internally."

"Oh grow a pair, you're fine," Lan Duo said while rolling his eyes.

Lang stared back up at him. "_Fine_? You just beat the crap outta me!"

"No, I was going easy on you today. Now get up."

"I thought you weren't going to hold back."

"I wasn't, until I saw how damn pathetic you looked. Now get the hell up."

Wu Tian wrinkled her nose at the display, glancing over at Koshchei. "This is your great hope? He is the one you expect to lead us to victory?"

The Amur Leopard's whiskers twitched and his tail curled in on itself. He was about as impressed by Lang's training as the other witnesses were, and most of them, having been assassins and bandits longer than Lang had even been alive, witnessed his training with outright derision. Koshchei didn't like thinking he had made a serious error, but the longer Duo attempted to teach Lang how to fight, the more the leopard began believing that his faith in the young wolf was completely unwarranted. That had been his hope, his plan, that Lang had untapped potential to be a great feared warrior, whose crowning moment of glory would be leading this force of five thousand to victory over the Valley and its protectors. He hated being wrong, and if he didn't remove himself of this situation soon, he would take out his frustrations most violently...on the nearest idiot he could find. Not that he was averse to killing, in fact he freely enjoyed it. But his success depended on these warriors and outlaws trusting him enough to risk their necks for him and his cause, and for some reason they didn't look kindly upon someone savagely killing one of their own for no good reason.

He took out his pipe and muttered to Tian, "Taking break, don't look for me."

"Of course not," she smirked. "I'm not a total idiot."

Koshchei normally had very little patience for females, but he was beginning to find the Wu Sisters were unlike other females...and he was grateful for that. He returned her smirk and retreated deeper into the underbrush. He stuffed his pipe and lit it by drawing a claw along a piece of flint. As he inhaled the deep fragrant smoke he pondered over his current situation. Lang was much smarter than he had given him credit. Koshchei himself would have never thought to include a huge band of Furious-Five-Haters as a distraction. Koshchei tended to avoid large groups in general, but ironically, he would be better hidden among so many. Five thousand was nothing to sneeze at (as the saying evidently went), and he would have an easier time attaining his goals if he didn't have to fight the kung fu warriors head on. He exhaled a long stream of smoke through his nostrils. But in battle, brains were nothing without having something to back them up. He had been fighting long enough to know that brute force alone was not enough to win a battle (though it certainly helped), and that strategy would win over force any day.

That was one of the first lessons he had learned from Shen.

Koshchei coughed when someone tugged sharply on the back of his collar. "Alright, talk!"

The leopard whirled and snarled, catching the interloper by the neck. Remarkably, Lan Duo was perfectly cool…except for the accusatory glare he sent in the feline's direction. "Tell me what you know," the wolf choked out.

Angry he had been interrupted during his smoke break - and quite rudely at that! - Koshchei applied more pressure to the wolf's neck. Duo choked, but still managed to sputter out, "He's not learning…"

"Who is not learning?"

Duo waited until the leopard loosened his grip before spitting out, "Lang! Who else? I've been at this for two weeks and he hasn't learned a damn thing!"

He thought so. If Koshchei was getting impatient, Lang's teacher had to be at his wit's end. "So you are taking back vord?"

Duo's answer surprised him: "The hell I am! What the hell is wrong with this kid?"

Koshchei shrugged, even as he silently asked himself the same question. "Is nothing wrong; he is slow learner…"

"Even a total moron knows to _block_ when someone's trying to hit you with a big stick! He's not getting it!"

The leopard stared back unblinkingly at the wolf before speaking; he remembered - quite clearly - having been in a similar situation before, long ago. "Is he problem…or is problem _you_?"

Duo froze and stared back at him, but instead of getting angry, he appeared to actually consider his words. "You're saying my _method_ is wrong, not him."

"_Da_."

"So what am I doing wrong?"

"You vant advice?"

"Weird as it is to admit, yeah, I want your advice."

Koshchei's black lips curled up into a grin. "Vell naow! Isn't this nice? Old teacher now teaches new teacher…is good, I do not mind. Someone needs to continue my vork after I die, vhich may be sooner than I am thinking, yes?"

Duo warily took a step back. "What're you talking about?"

The leopard gave him a flat look as he took a long drag from his pipe. "I am eight and seventy, _malchik_."

"Bull shit."

He chuckled. "Is true. One of only few true things I eva tell you. I have seventy-eight years. A man like me has lived too long, and not live much longer. I am thinking…you are not as bad as other volfs—you do not, eh, make nonsense."

"Make nonsense?"

"Ach, vhat is term…?"

"I don't bullshit anybody?"

"_Da_, that! This I am liking about you. You are direct. Direct people make alvays best teachers."

"But I _am_ being direct with Lang, so why isn't he getting it?"

"Vhy do _you_ think is not getting it?"

Well, it was clear Duo hadn't exactly thought of that before. The rather apathetic wolf was, at least in Koshchei's eye, not as indifferent as he wanted people to believe. He wasn't as lazy as people thought him to be either. Unlike his brethren, Koshchei noticed, he didn't go chasing after something just for the hell of it. If he wanted something bad enough, he waited for the right opportunity.

Just like a cat.

The old leopard grinned.

"Well, I guess I could stop calling him a pansy-ass weakling," Duo said. "Offer a little bit more encouragement now and then."

"That vould help, yes," the leopard agreed with an understating nod.

"Wait…" he said as the recognition dawned. It was like someone had lit a bank of candles behind the wolf's eyes. "I'm teaching him with a _pack_ mentality. He doesn't have a pack—he's a lone wolf. I need to teach how a lone wolf fights! _That's _why he's not getting it!" For the first time that Koshchei knew, Duo actually smiled; then the wolf turned back to him before resuming his teaching: "You're pretty good at this."

The leopard shrugged, puffing on his pipe. "Vhat can I say? I haff much experience." He watched as Duo retreated to continue his lesson with the rookie, the leopard now deeper in thought. Koshchei knew he was a creature of habit, and he had trained many like Lang before.

He clenched his teeth around the mouthpiece. Shen had never much trusted individuals, felt that their loyalty lay elsewhere, and the Amur tiger had demanded utmost loyalty from his men. Koshchei had been loyal...to a point. He'd had a good relationship with Shen before their falling-out; the two felines understood each other. It helped that Shen was as fond of his ancestral land as Koshchei was, and that they carried the same derision for lower creatures. They had a chance meeting; Koshchei had killed Shen's best assassin, but Shen saw a golden opportunity and hired the leopard straightaway. It proved to be a great partnership.

Until _she _arrived.

Koshchei heavily exhaled through his clenched teeth. What in hell's name had Shen seen in her? She wasn't a warrior, like that tigress Koshchei had introduced him to (the leopard didn't much care for anyone, let alone women, but felt if Shen _had _to get married, it might as well be to someone as tough and ruthless as he was). Instead, Shen had left one night and returned the next with a dancer - a _dancer _- as his bride. She was pretty little thing, the leopard admitted, but not enough to turn his eye. She turned out to be rather fertile, too, much to Shen's delight.

The leopard remembered the day the first brat was born. They had scheduled a raid in the nearby village, until that foreign witch went into labor. Shen had called off the whole thing; he wanted to be around for the birth of his heir. Shen's followers only saw him stay stoic while his wife's screams tore through the camp, but Koshchei had seen what a wreck the tiger became until it was announced he was the father of a bouncing baby boy, and that the mother was fine, too. It was disgusting, the way that witch changed a perfectly respectable man into a trembling jumble of nerves. And it only got worse with every succeeding child. When those damn twins were born, oh ho!, Shen was over the moon. Twin boys, perfect rowdy duplicates of their father, except they smiled more; and _that woman _had survived, though Koshchei had hoped that labor would kill her like twins killed other women. No, she had yet one more to bring into the world, as if giving birth to twins wasn't a good enough feat to cement Shen's affections forever. No, seven sons, she would be blessed in Heaven for bearing seven sons, who were nothing like their father, no matter what anyone told them.

Koshchei hated those boys, every last one of them, because they had changed the man they called Father. Shen's wife had begun the process, but Shen had completely changed once Shang was born, that little bastard; he had even inherited his mother's green eyes, which made the leopard hate him all the more. His intense dislike didn't turn into outright fury until young Shang had attacked him and gave him the scars that still crisscrossed his forearms (an incident he never told anyone about, more out of pride than anything else; what would people think of him if they knew he'd been viciously clawed and bitten by a three-year-old?). And the brat was never punished for it; his mother had praised him on his strength. It wasn't until that point that Koshchei realized Shen's wife hated him almost as much as he hated her.

"Mr. Koshchei," Wu Tian called from a distance, mindful of his earlier request for privacy, "You might want to come see this."

The leopard sighed and dumped out his pipe before joining her and her sisters. The trio sat on a pile of rocks overlooking the clearing, now in an uproar of activity. Koshchei paused in his step and watched in utmost amazement as Lang finally blocked a strike from Duo, then quickly swung the pole around and slammed it into the other wolf's side. Duo took a fall and held his ribs, his face scrunched up in pain, but he still got up. Lang held his staff in a defensive position, waiting for Duo to attack.

"Don't stop now, runt," Duo mocked. "You think a pack's going to give you time to take a breath? Come on, hit me."

"Stand your ground," Koshchei heard Wu Zhu whisper, "C'mon baby, don't fall for it..."

Lang stood his ground, staring back at Duo with narrowed eyes.

Koshchei crept up to the Wu Sisters, startling not a one of them as he leaned against the rock and whispered in Russian, "_Good, stay, wait, watch..._"

Now Duo was getting angry. "I said _attack _you little idiot!"

"Why should I take orders from you?" Lang coolly asked him. "I'm not your bitch, remember?"

"Fine," the older wolf said, adjusting his grip on his staff. "Gimme five minutes, and you will be!"

Lang adjusted his footing, but other than that, he didn't move. Duo took this chance to make a running charge, swinging his staff around like a _pudao_. Lang cut off his attack with a swift downward block, then jabbed the other end of his staff into the other wolf's head. When Duo staggered back from the blow, Lang swung the staff and tripped him; he twirled the staff again and knocked Duo's weapon out of his hands and subsequently pushed him down into the dirt, the older wolf staring back up at him in utter surprise.

In the ensuing silence, the only thing anyone heard was Koshchei swearing in Russian. Wu Jiang then offered the closest possible translation: "Son of a bitch, he's got it."

Wu Tian narrowed her garnet-colored eyes at the young wolf and frowned. "He's got something, alright."

Wu Zhu noticed her unease...and so did Koshchei. "So what's wrong?" Zhu asked. "New teaching method's working better than the old one."

"My concern is for Lang, of course," Tian said to her sister. "It seems to me that he doesn't get physically stronger until he gets angry."

"That's a good thing," Jiang argued. "Anger is how most men fight. Its a survival mechanism; the most aggressive one wins."

"Not every time," Koshchei said. He looked between the three sisters before his eyes settled on Tian. "Is good point; anger can be gift and curse."

Tian coolly replied, "For the time being, it should be fine; it will teach him to figure out his own strength. But once he knows what that is and what his limitations are, he'll need to know how to control his temper. Once his enemies know his temper is a weakness, they'll exploit it. Too many warriors get sloppy when they get angry."

"Give one example," Koshchei demanded.

Tian thinly smiled. "I'll give two: Tai Lung...and you."

Koshchei's lips curved upwards, but it could hardly have been called a smile. His eyes flashed dangerously at the female, who only returned his glare with a secretive smile, as if she knew something he didn't. He didn't like that. Shen's wife had often used that smile, and he would have given anything to rip it off her face while he still had the chance.

"You haff never lost temper in fight?" he asked her, a slight edge in his tone.

"Once," she replied. "That's why I won't allow it to happen ever again."

He paused, staring her down, and it took all of Tian's inner strength to keep from blinking or looking nervous. Before Koshchei could say anything further, Duo tapped him on the shoulder.

"Since you're so good at this, I gotta question."

"_Da_?" he replied with strained patience.

"Don't you Siberians have a strength-training thing to do with carrying a log for a few miles? I'm thinking of getting Lang to do that, build up his core muscles."

"What're you nuts?" Jiang asked, clearly knowing which process he was referring to. "That would kill him!"

"Vhat doesn't kill only make stronger," Koshchei said with a nod to Duo. "I am knowing vhat you mean. Get yak ova there, one vit axe, chop down tree and make big log. Smallish-type carry ova shoulders until not-so-smallish-type, _da_?"

Duo nodded with satisfaction. "Thought so. Thanks, man," he said and, forgetting himself a moment, slapped the leopard on the back in a show of camaraderie. It wasn't until he'd begun to walk away that he realized with horror what he had done...then he walked a little faster.

Zhu couldn't help giggling a little at Duo's hasty retreat and Koshchei's scandalized expression. Even Jiang had a hard time hiding the smirk.

* * *

Lang's training progressed this way the very next morning, the youth forced to carry a roughly fifty-pound log for ten miles the next day, jogging the whole way. He feet blistered, his arms ached, and every muscle in his body screamed in protest from sudden usage of muscles the wolf didn't even know existed. The only thing that kept the young wolf going was Lan Duo's encouragements...

"C'mon, maggot, pick it up! My 'ole granny can walk faster than that, and she's dead!"

"Whatever happened to positive reinforcement?" Lang complained, but this was the only complaint he'd made all day. He was simply too exhausted to think of something else.

"This _is _positive," Duo protested. "You want me to go back to calling you a girl?"

"I resent that comment," Wu Jiang said as she suddenly jogged in step with them.

"The hell are you doing?" Duo asked, surprised to see her as far ahead of the pack as they were. Because of the nature of this training, Duo had gotten permission for the two of them to progress farther than the scouts. At this rate, the rest of the horde was a good couple miles behind them.

The snow leopard shrugged a sarcastic reply, "Watching my girlish figure."

"Being one of the few women in this horde, I bet you're not the only one."

Jiang smirked at his retort. Then she turned her attention to Lang, "You dead yet? Give me a status report, babe."

As Lang was panting to keep up, Duo answered for him: "He's getting there. He'll rest when we stop at the next river..."

"Oh thank the gods," Lang gasped.

He should have waited until Duo finished: "He'll have to do some lunges and knee-bends with the log."

"I'm gonna do _what_?"

"Yeesh," Jiang winced, "Slave-driver."

"Its not like I'm asking him to sleep with the damn thing. This is the quickest way I know to build the muscle he's going to need. Those skinny arms aren't good for anything."

"I'm right here, you know!" Lang spoke up.

"I don't hear running, small fry," Duo snapped. "Double-time, _hut_!"

Lang grunted and forced himself to run faster, gritting his teeth as sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes. But to his credit, he managed to forge ahead of the other wolf and snow leopard. They lightly jogged behind him, keeping a few paces back on purpose.

"Think he'll be ready?" Jiang asked breathlessly.

"He better be," Duo said as he started to pant; he'd been running about as long as Lang had, and it was starting to show. They had both been up since before dawn, and it was now midday, and for mid-autumn, the sun was unbearably hot. "Otherwise my plan is worth shit."

"You're not going to fill me in?"

"It doesn't concern you." He hesitated, partly to catch his breath. "I mean that in a nice way."

"Sure."

"You don't need to get involved. Revenge is a nasty business."

"Duo, honey, I'm an assassin. Revenge is sorta my bag."

"Point."

"You're not plotting against the old cat, are you?"

"Fuck no, I'm not an idiot. Much as I hate to admit, Koshchei's the best ally I can get."

"But you don't trust him, either."

"Would you?"

"Fuck no, I'm not an idiot either." After she hesitated, she asked, "What else you have up your sleeve? For Lang, I mean."

"I'm gonna keep him running, gonna make sure he works on balance and reaction times. I asked a couple of those mountain folk to give him the low-down on unarmed combat. Koshchei said he'd teach knife-fighting when he's ready."

"Think it'll happen?"

"For the kid's sake, I hope so."

Jiang slowed down to a brisk walk and called after Duo, "Okay, this isn't just about your plan anymore. Admit it: you actually care about him."

Duo abruptly stopped and turned on his heel. He hissed at her, "Let's get one thing straight, lady, that kid only means one thing to me, and one thing only: he's a means to an end. I don't care what happens after I get what I want, as long as I get it."

Jiang narrowed her green eyes at him. "So once he's outlived his usefulness, you're throwing him to the wolves?"

He gave her a hate-filled glare. "For future reference, I resent that comment. I find that specist."

She returned his glare with one of her own. "And I find your 'girl' comment sexist, so now we're even, puppy-boy." After a pause, she said, "And what I meant when I asked you what you had in mind for Lang...I didn't mean training."

Duo hesitated. "You meant why I'm helping him? I told you, its about revenge."

"You're using him to get revenge on someone, and its not Koshchei? Then who?"

"Its really none of your business."

"I can make it my business, if this plot of yours is going to get us all killed."

"I'm not planning on killing anybody. I plan on getting back at someone, but I don't want anybody dead."

"Why use the kid? What does he have to do with it?"

Duo looked over his shoulder at Lang, who was quite a ways ahead of them, then told her, "We're both connected to this guy. Public humiliation is one thing, but I want to completely destroy him."

"Jeez," she winced, "What'd this guy do to you that was so awful?"

Duo sent one more warning glare at her, then turned to run after Lang. "Do yourself a favor, Wu Jiang, and stay out of my business."

Jiang snorted and watched as the wolves trotted off, and wondered if she should bother telling her sisters about this.

Duo, meanwhile, picked up the pace to catch up to Lang, who had finally reached the bank of a shallow, rocky but quiet river, and was hunched over with the log still resting on his shoulders. His face was pale, and he looked to be in absolute agony. Duo finally took pity on him.

"Okay, you can take it off. You did good today, you deserve some rest."

Lang didn't move.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yeah."

"So you can take the log off your shoulders now."

"I can't."

"Yes you can. I said you cou-"

"No, I mean physically, I can't. I can't move my arms."

Duo outwardly winced; maybe he'd been a bit too harsh on the kid today. Sighing, he helped lift the log off the youth's shoulders and let it drop to the sandy bank. Lang sank to his knees and doubled over. Duo knelt next to him.

"Don't do that, you won't be able to breathe. Here, lean back against this tree." He helped ease the younger wolf into a reclined seated position, a pained look on the small wolf's face. "Where's it hurt?"

Lang sent him a dirty look. "Everywhere."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Sure: every-_fucking_-where."

Duo rolled his eyes and looked over Lang's arms. The veins in his forearms and hands bulged visibly through his skin, and he could see his heart pounding in his thin chest. The elder wolf instructed him how to breathe so he could relax and bring his blood pressure down. While Lang practiced his breathing, Duo filled up their canteens and gave him a cold wet cloth to put over his forehead and eyes. He really had been too hard on him. Duo had once been small and skinny himself, and he couldn't remember or imagine his own master doing something like this. Now, he couldn't say he had good reason to force this training, no matter how much Lang needed it. Duo had learned a hard lesson that day, and to his worry, he realized it wasn't the one he thought.

"So why are you really helping me?" Lang finally asked him. In the time it took him to recover enough to speak and eat without losing his breath or his lunch, the rest of the horde had arrived and set up camp. Duo had caught the glances coming from the other wolves, and so had Lang, who interpreted their expressions to mean that they were impressed. Duo brought his attention back to the present. Should he say something? His argument with Wu Jiang earlier had got him thinking...

The bandit wasn't lying when he said that, though he trusted Koshchei about as far as he could throw him, he still considered the Amur leopard an ally. If his survival depended on his leasing his soul to the Devil, then he was willing to do so. His motivation was not so simple as the prospects of wealth or power; those were nice, but not what he really wanted. And he had an inkling that Lang didn't care for acquiring more wealth than the Emperor, or having his power either. Duo decided that, yes, Lang would probably want in on this plan, because he had as much invested interest as Duo did of seeing one particular individual go down.

"I'm helping you because those guys," Duo said, thumbing over his shoulder back at the camp, "Will turn on you one day. You can't hide behind the old man forever, and when that day comes, you'll want a fighting chance."

Lang furrowed his brows and stared accusingly at him. "But won't _you_ turn on me like the others?"

Duo took a long drink from his canteen. When he looked back at the young wolf, he asked, "And if I was going to do that, why would I bother teaching you anything at all?"

"Okay, I'm confused."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"If you're _not_ going to turn on me like the others, and you don't really care about me, why are you teaching me to fight?"

Duo stared at him a moment. Then looked around to be sure no one was eavesdropping. "Do you really want to know?" he asked. He leaned closer and whispered, "Because you're not the only one Zi Hao's ever terrorized. Karma is a bitch, and when karma bites, she bites hard. This conversation doesn't leave this bank, got it?"

Lang slowly smiled, but willed it down so no one else would see. "What conversation?"

Duo smirked. "Good boy."

* * *

"How is he?"

Corporal Liu looked up from his chess game against Captain Zang, then looked back at the door to Cadet Hu's room as Lieutenant Gao exited. The soldiers had been set up in an older part of the Palace, that had once served as lodging for students before the newer dormitory had been built in the last century. It was rumored that these stone walls, which had some veins of jade lined throughout the hewn stones, had been quarried from the very mountain the Palace stood upon. It was somewhat dark, drafty and a little dingy, but the quartet had seen worse barracks than this. And they weren't ones to question a gift when it was granted to them in a time of need. Zang, however, had his suspicions, and was getting increasingly aggravated that his men didn't see the potential trap they had fallen into as a result of the Cadet's injury. Despite what he had told the cadet, Zang was very resentful about the events that followed Kong's death. It would have been better if the boy had died; at least then Zang would have had more flexibility to find and defeat Tai Lung. Now not only was he a man down, he was trapped on a mountain behind enemy lines at the mercy of a man who was known to be a hard-ass master of kung fu, a master he knew would break him like a toothpick if he felt so inclined. Not for the first time, the black warhorse was resentful of the cadet for getting them into this mess in the first place. If only he had just followed orders...

Lieutenant Gao sighed and shook his broad head. "He still gets dizzy when he stands. He tried walking around the room a bit, but he kept falling over. Master Mantis was here earlier, and he figures Quon's not out of the woods yet, but he's better than he could be."

"How long did they say it would take for him to recover?" the black warhorse asked.

"About a month, sir," Liu replied, moving his pawn across the board. "Quon wanted to resign his part in our mission, but I told him it was up to you."

"And it is," Zang nodded, moving one of his pieces across the board and capturing one of Liu's pawns. He _wanted _to grant that resignation, but it would have involved too much paperwork, and maneuvers of this delicacy required as small a paper trail as possible. So he told them (and himself), "The cadet is still too important for this mission. He can take his time in recovery. We are in no hurry. We are exactly where we want and need to be." He was really telling himself this information, if only by saying it, he could come to believe it.

"So we're no longer tracking down our quarry?" Gao asked with a lowered voice. Corporal Liu leaned forward to hear his captain's reply.

Zang looked between the pachyderm and bay horse and picked up a chess piece, patiently waiting for Liu to make his move. When Zang set his piece down, Liu winced at the position he'd put himself into. "There's no need to. When I notified Kong's widow, I also sent word to a colleague of mine in Yunnan Province. He'll have guards along the entire border of Tibet, on orders to capture Tai Lung, dead or alive." At least he prayed that would happen. He had heard nothing from his colleague to suggest the message was even received by the right people.

"How do we know he'll keep his mouth shut?" Gao asked, already suspicious of the unnamed colleague.

"Because I paid him an indecent sum to get the job done and not tell anyone," Zang hissed, implying that that was as much as they needed to know. "Once we have word that Tai Lung is no more, we can move forward with Phase Two."

"What's Phase Two?" Liu whispered.

"That's on a need to know basis," Zang said. "And as the saying goes, you don't need to know." Truthfully, not even Zang knew what Phase Two was, but he was confident he would know what to do when the time came. For now, he would keep playing the bluff, hoping that no one would call him on it.

Behind the closed door, Quon felt dually dizzy and nauseous for two completely different reasons. Dizzy because of the head injury, of course, but nauseous from the anxiety that suddenly spiked in his veins. He had limped from the bed to press his ear to the door to see what his comrades were talking about. He expected them to be complaining about his injury slowing them down and jeopardizing their plans. He had not signed up for this. He thought he was just bringing a criminal into justice, to stand trial for a crime. No one had ever said anything about murder!

He'd had a feeling from the get-go that Captain Zang wasn't telling him the whole truth, but Quon was used to that. As Zang had said, most of the time in the military, if you didn't need to know about it, you didn't know about it, and you _certainly _never questioned authority about whether they knew about it.

Quon carried himself back to the bed and slumped down into it as a wave of dizziness made him lose his balance. The bed creaked loudly beneath him, and he knocked over the pewter water pitcher on the nightstand. Stifling a curse, he heard footsteps at the door. Quon prayed that it would be someone agreeable...

"Quon?" Corporal Liu whispered, poking his head into the room. "Are you okay?"

The tiger came up with a quick lie: "I was trying to get some water, the pitcher's almost empty, and I just got really thirsty suddenly..."

"Did you just try walking to the door?"

"...I got dizzy again and had to lie down or I would've passed out. I'm sorry, sir."

Liu stepped into the small room and placed a hand over Quon's forehead. The tiger recoiled a little from his touch, even though it was a gentle one, wincing as his head throbbed. His head hurt too much for him to hope that Liu took his sweaty brow for fever and not fear.

"Your head hurts again?"

"I'm sorry, sir."

"Stop apologizing, Cadet."

"Yes, sir, Corporal."

Liu picked up the pitcher and walked back to the door. "Are you nauseous too?"

Was he ever. "Yes, sir."

"I'll get Master Mantis or Master Monkey for you. If I can't find them, I'll find whatever healer this palace has. You'll get better, Quon, don't worry."

When Liu closed the door behind him, he left it open a crack to allow a thin sliver of light in. Quon heard him explain to his superior officers "It sounds like a migraine, but he really needs a doctor...when I felt his forehead, it felt like he's running a fever."

"Fever?" Gao asked. "How bad?"

"Burning hot to the touch, incredibly pale, labored breathing, his clothes and the sheets are soaked with perspiration...Captain, I don't think the dizziness is related to the head injury; Quon's really sick."

Quon heard Zang raise his voice and order "Get Master Mantis, now. I don't care if you have to drag him out of Shifu's clutches."

It was an odd paradox, Quon thought as he heard Liu vacate the other room in search of a doctor. Zang Deshi was perfectly fine with murdering a married man and father-to-be whether or not he was guilty of a crime, but when it came to a worthless Cadet, no expense was too great to save him? Or maybe Zang was just concerned Quon had a communicable disease that he could catch. Judging from the horse's recent testimony, Quon was willing to bet he was more concerned with saving his own skin that his underling's health.

Not too long after, Master Monkey was the one to come into the room, bearing a bag of herbs he had taken from Mantis's room. The simian examined the tiger carefully, looking at his eyes, nails, tongue, and gently applied pressure to the feline's temples to ease the blinding migraine. Monkey was even kind enough to jump out of the way and provide a bowl for Quon when he hunched over and vomited. Monkey gave him some ginger to chew on as he continued to look him over. Finally the kung fu master and part-time healer packed up his bag and left a parting shot to Quon, "Just the migraine; I've left some herb packets to make into tea, and that should ease the headache and the stomachache. Try drinking more herbal teas; your anxiety level is through the roof! You should really learn to relax."

Quon didn't say anything to that. He just accepted a drink of water and fell asleep. Just like another tiger that same night, his sleep was anything but restful.

* * *

Yeah, a lot going on here. Not really much to say or explain. Except for the following: Sonam's lines 'I'm sorry honey, I don't know what I was thinking, It will never happen again' are taken right from family lore; its what my dad always told my mom when he did something she didn't like. The "knitting pattern" Mei Xing memorized is...actually, one I memorized too XD for a shawl I made, that does make a "candlelight" motif in the stitching. Considering Tai Lung's new position, and the fact that the kid's sure to be as much of a hellraiser as its parents, I thought it would be appropriate ;) . And Lang's training with the log for miles and hours on end is actually based on real training employed by Russian Special Forces...I've seen documentaries on these guys; they're hard-core. Aside from that, not much in the way of author notes. Hope you enjoyed, the next chapter will come soon!


	13. Chapter 13: Purification

This chapter was a drain to write, and probably for good reason. One, its longer than most of the others, and two, I took so long writing it because I participated in National Novel Writing Month this year (I WON! WOO!); 50,000 words in 30 days, averaging 2000 words a day. We shall not speak of the monstrosity I wrote. Before you say "It can't be that bad..." it can. I took a dare to write the cheesiest, corniest romance possible, and I think I rose to the occasion. But enough about that...on to the chapter! (if there are a lot of errors in here, sorry; been running a fever today and I'm not at my best)

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, that is the domain of Dreamworks pictures.

* * *

Chapter 13: Purification

* * *

The bird returned Tai Lung's stare, a slight smile on her beak. The snow leopard, still stunned, staggered a bit in his footing as he gaped at the magnificent bird. The Phoenix lowered her head, turned it this way and that way, looking at him from as many sides as possible, waiting with a patience only reserved for those who had all the time in the world.

Tai Lung finally blinked a few times then rubbed his eyes. "I must have had some bad eggs this morning..."

The Phoenix smiled at him. _So sure that rationality explains all._

"It does, doesn't it?" he argued. "You're not really there. I'm hallucinating you. And if I'm hallucinating you then that means my even talking to you-a creature that is not even there-means I am completely nutters."

_You used to believe in me. You used to believe my people exist._

"I used to believe a lot of things." He frowned. "And I'm still talking to you...when this is over, I'm checking myself into an asylum."

She bypassed his skepticism, gracefully arching her neck to look up into his eyes. _You believed in many things, and still do believe. You believe in love. You believe in miracles. You believe in gods and Heaven and that anything is possible. You claim there is no proof. True believers do not need proof._

"I suppose that means I'm not a true believer." He sighed when he saw her recoil, hanging her graceful head in sorrow. "What do you want from me? Yes, I used to believe all those things, but life hasn't exactly been kind to me, you know. I've stopped believing for a reason, and plenty of damn good reasons."

A small smile grew on her beak. _You sound like him, when I first appeared to him._

He thought about it before asking, "You mean Sun Bear? You're saying I'm just like him?" After a long pause, where he felt the Phoenix was giving him the flattest look possible for such a beatific being, he replied, "Well, fine, I suppose that's not much of a stretch." He hesitated, then asked, "He lost his faith too?"

_Faith is not lost, only misplaced. You still have it. You know in your heart, Tenzin, that you never lost hope, or faith._

He thought it over as he stared back at her. Going to prison for life would have shaken any man enough to make him lose hope. Coming close to death more times than he cared to count would have shaken stronger men than he. "May I ask why you're appearing to me now? I haven't finished my training yet. Neither has Po."

_I am a reminder for one, _she said. _I am a beacon for another. The time of the first champion will soon end, and your time will reach its zenith. Your master knows when it shall be, and soon, so shall you._

Tai Lung stared back at her with mixed awe and trepidation. He knew he was nowhere near ready to assume the title. If what Sun Bear had told him was true, there was no way he would be ready by the solstice. He wasn't even sure he'd be ready years from now. He had far too many questions left for Sun Bear, and if the old master would soon die...Tai Lung would be left to navigate this title and position with no guidance whatsoever.

But Po was in the same boat. Worse, actually, now that he thought of it. Oogway had only spoken to the panda once while still living, and every other time he had spoken to Po through his dreams or meditations, his instructions had, if possible, been more vague and unclear than they would have been in life. Until he had come to this temple and learned the true history of the Dragon Warrior, Po had been walking blind, with only legends and outright falsehoods to guide him.

_His name is Asmodei Koshchei._

Tai Lung shook himself out of his reverie. "What, what was that?"

The Phoenix looked him directly in the eye. _The monster you seek to defeat is named Asmodei Koshchei. Your dear friend's mother tried to tell you, but as a lower immortal, she does not have the same influence as I. _

"You can defy the gods?"

_Tenzin, I am a god._

"Oh. Right. That makes sense."

The Phoenix raised her head and looked to the sky. He looked up after her, but saw only open sky that was swiftly darkening into cold late autumn night. The avian spirit turned her head back to him and said right before she disappeared from view:

_He will give you all you need. Trust in him, as you trust in me._

He blinked, and she was gone.

Tai Lung turned about in place, desperately scanning the courtyard for any sign of a bird. Nothing. No fire, no red or golden feathers, not even the tell-tale singing to announce her arrival or departure. The Phoenix had disappeared into thin air. He hated using cliches, but that was exactly what had happened.

He turned around again and found Sun Bear watching him from the cloisters. The snow leopard froze, feeling like a child caught doing something he shouldn't be doing. Sun Bear had an odd expression on his old, weather-beaten face, but he didn't look angry. He didn't even look annoyed. Most surprising, he looked more depressed than anything, but most distressingly to the snow leopard, the old bear looked to have accepted whatever it was that bothered him so much.

"She was here, wasn't she?"

Tai Lung paused before he guiltily nodded. "She was."

"Did she say anything to you? Be honest."

The snow leopard looked back at him, feeling downright awful that something had shifted into his favor-not Sun Bear's, whom he owed so much to-and that Tai Lung would be the only one to conceivably benefit from this seismic shift in destinies. "She said that my time was coming."

"How ironic, mine too," the old master smirked. "Seems we do have a lot in common."

Tai Lung's eyes widened. "How long have you been...?"

"She's told me. She told me that you and Po were coming, but she refused to say who you were. She's rather irritating like that, just so you know."

"She told me I still have faith."

"And you do. What else?"

"She told me the name of the bloke who's trying to hurt our families."

Sun Bear actually looked surprised. "Seriously? Damn, she never tells me things like that! I'll knock it off your tab," he added when Tai Lung began to tally for the Swear Jar. "At this rate, you may have a zero balance by the time you leave."

"Gods, I hope so." He looked around the courtyard once more, then back at his master. "Does this mean that, soon, I mean, that you..."

"Will croak? Tai Lung, I knew decades ago that I was going to die." Sun Bear beckoned him to come closer, which the snow leopard reluctantly did. "This just means that it'll happen a lot sooner than either of us expected. If the Phoenix appeared to you as she appeared to me, so many centuries ago, that means she's officially accepted you as my successor, and that my time is severely limited."

"Limited?"

"Tai Lung," he said softly, with heart-breaking honesty, "Her appearing to you-choosing you _before _I can present you to her-is her way of telling me I have only a week left to live, maybe less. In the next few days, I need to teach both you _and _Po as much as possible, including moves and techniques that you need to know to truly become the warriors you were meant to be."

The snow leopard silently followed him, feeling like a boulder had been dropped on his shoulders. Yes, he was desperate to know his true destiny and to assume it, but to assume it at the expense of someone like Sun Bear... Tai Lung had tried to assume his own destiny at Shifu's expense, and seriously hurt him in the process. Shifu had not come close to dying at all, but the knowledge that Sun Bear was going to expire-and within the next seven days-brought a sobriety that Tai Lung was not prepared for. In his defense, Sun Bear didn't seem too worried about facing his own expiration; perhaps he had mentally prepared for this ever since he first drank of the Spring of Eternal, er, Longer-Lasting life. He knew he would die eventually, and prepared himself for it. Hell, he even had his own tomb constructed below the library. He had had plenty of years to plan and prepare for it.

Tai Lung couldn't understand his own motivation now. He _wanted _to know his destiny, and he _wanted _to assume it, to be someone great, powerful, and both beloved and feared. But-and as he was seeing himself through the window of another's soul-he and Sun Bear truly did have much in common. The snow leopard thought about the amazing story of the original Dragon and Phoenix warriors, and knew that Sun Bear's motivations were his own, and that Oogway's motivations were most certainly Po's. If it had been them at that battle, had Tai Lung been mortally wounded and forced to drink at that spring to save his life, the snow leopard knew Po would, without hesitation, drink from it as well, just as Oogway had done for Sun Bear. He could tell from the narrative that the two loved each other as brothers and dear friends, and though Sun Bear had not explicitly said so, Tai Lung knew that the old bear would have willingly laid down his life for the late tortoise master, just as he himself would die for Po. There was nothing romantic about it; Po was the first person after his imprisonment to welcome him with open arms, no questions asked. Po was the first person to forgive him, and treat him not as an ex-con, not as a dangerous warrior, but as a person, just like anyone else. Had Oogway done the same, he wondered? Had Oogway-after Sun Bear had saved his life that first time-just smiled at him and nonchalantly offered tea to the likely bemused bear who had just barged in and defeated an assassin? Tai Lung could see him doing that.

_Oh,_ the tortoise would say in his own measured, patient way, _An assassin. How interesting. Would you like some tea?_

And Tai Lung could just as easily imagined Sun Bear's perplexed reply: After a long pause, wherein the likely armed-to-the-teeth and armored ursine warrior would narrow his eyes in his typical discerning way, he would ask point-blank, ._..Are you out of your damn mind?_

And Oogway, ever the smart aleck, would reply, _Most likely, yes. Tea?_

And Sun Bear would do like Tai Lung had done whenever Po offered food: he would shut up, accept it, and damn well appreciate it. He couldn't help it, Po was a great cook. And, he recalled faintly, Oogway really knew his teas.

He snapped out of it when Po tapped on his shoulder. "You okay, buddy?"

His initial reflex was to say "yes, of course I am", only to deflect any possibly uncomfortable conversation that might follow. Instead, he offered the truth, completely lacking sarcasm. "No. No, I don't believe I'm well at all."

"_You're_ not well?" Sun Bear snorted. "You're not the one who's about to die."

"_Die_?" Po gasped. The panda turned to the old master. "You're dying? How long have you...?"

"Since the day I was born, Dragon Warrior," the old master replied. "The minute you're born, you are dying for the rest of your life."

"Wow," Po said. "That...is really, really sad. And kind of pathetic."

Sun Bear glared at him.

"Hey, you're the one who said I was a lot like Oogway; he'd talk to you the same way."

"He would," Tai Lung agreed. "He hated it whenever Shifu got fatalistic. And he knocked sense into anyone with a black-and-white worldview."

"I hope you'll forgive my rather dark mood," Sun Bear sharply said with a glare between them. "Its not every day one learns they're about to die at any moment. I'm a little perturbed by it. Po, what did you learn about dragons?"

"Uh," the panda began, but looked a little sheepish. "I actually didn't spend a lot of time reading; I spent more time thinking. I read about those kung-fu schools you told me to look into. You were right, they are more my style; Ba Gua and Tai Chi," he explained for Tai Lung's benefit. "See, now I get why Oogway was so long-lived...I mean, aside from the magical spring or whatever. The fighting forms of the Dragon Warrior were never meant for direct hits. Its all about using the enemy's strength and own bodily inertia against him. Here, try hitting me."

Tai Lung raised a brow and looked around the tight enclosed space of the library. A quick look to Sun Bear said that the old master was about as enthusiastic about this demonstration as the snow leopard was. "Po, I'm not hitting you."

"C'mon."

"No."

"One punch, that's it."

"Remember where you wanted to stop a revolving wall with your body? This is another of those situations. I'm not hitting you."

Po finally snapped, "_Hit me_, you son of a bitch!"

The fur on his hackles rose and a growl ripped from his throat. Fine, he never really knew his mother while she lived, but no one-_no one_-called his mother a bitch. Especially not some fat, monochromatic punk. So he threw a punch.

Po deflected it with an outward sweep of his arm, then lunged down low, swinging his other arm down to knock Tai Lung off his feet. The snow leopard fell and hit the floor just as he realized he had literally fallen right into the trap. Sun Bear was impressed.

"Oogway used that move once, on a highwayman we encountered in the western regions. Very well executed," the master said.

"Thanks," said Po. "I got the idea from watching the other brothers and novices practicing grappling." Po pointed out the window at the courtyard, where the last class of the day was practicing sparring methods. Tai Lung picked himself up and grumbled as he rubbed at his sore rump as Po explained. "See how the bigger one launches forward? He has a harder time stopping than the smaller one, because there's more weight. Larger bodies in motion are harder to stop than smaller bodies. Like a rock falling down a hill. If its a small rock, you can stop it with your body, but if its a boulder rolling down, you're not going to stand there and take what it gives you. You move out of the way and suffer less damage than if you faced it head-on." The panda pointed at Tai Lung. "You are the boulder. If I had kept a strong stance and tried to catch your punch, I could've seriously hurt myself. But by moving out of the way..."

Tai Lung saw where he was going. "By moving out of the way, the entire force of the opponent's strike is felt by the _opponent_, not you."

Po grinned. "Exactly! This is what I noticed while watching the kids-their bodies, when they propel themselves forward, tend to stay moving, unless something causes them to stop. I think I might be on to something here. I don't know what, but I can tell its something big."

Sun Bear had an odd look on his face, but then he smiled. "You're adding on to Oogway's teachings."

"Well, not really," Po said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Oogway just had really roundabout ways of teaching. I think this is a better, more direct way to show what his style was all about."

"Now, answer my next question: did you read anything about dragons?"

Po hesitated, then said, "A little."

"And? What are your opinions?"

"I think it requires further study."

"Good answer. And I agree. That is why, tonight, both of you are going to stay here, in the library. I will give you a list of subjects to read up on. Once you have studied, we will begin the process of opening your minds tomorrow morning."

"Opening our minds?" Tai Lung echoed.

"Yes. Specifically, opening the channels to each other's minds, that you two may communicate like Oogway and I did. I will need to meditate on how best to accomplish this in such short time, and you two will need to steel yourselves for when it occurs."

* * *

They had dinner, and Sun Bear sent them back to the library with a short list of references, plus candles and blankets to keep themselves warm. There was a brazier in the middle of one of the smaller reading rooms, which Po lit and fed with kindling and charcoal. The panda expertly tended the fire until it warmed the room comfortably enough to not require the blankets. Tai Lung watched him, wondering where he had learned this, when Po caught his look and explained, "Part of learning to cook is knowing how to make the oven and stove just hot enough that you cook the food without burning it. It's one of the first things I learned."

"That's interesting," Tai Lung smirked, "I would have thought it was noodles."

"Making the dough, sure. But I was too small yet to make the noodles." Po hesitated, then cleared his throat and said, "I lied to Sun Bear earlier."

"What about?"

"About what I read or didn't read. I read more about dragons than I told him."

"Oh."

After a long, uncomfortable pause, Po asked, "You knew about those other dragons, didn't you?"

"Not before I read up on phoenixes earlier, no," the snow leopard answered guiltily. "I...wasn't quite sure what it meant. It bothers you, doesn't it?"

"What, that there are more cultures that believe dragons are mean and nasty than good? Not really," Po said with a nonchalant shrug.

The snow leopard stared at him. "You're not? But why?"

Po shrugged again. "It seemed obvious to _me_: people start to fear what they don't understand, and what people fear, they start to hate. My guess is that those other cultures don't understand dragons like we do. In what I read, it didn't look like those cultures gave offerings to the dragons, like we do. That's probably why the dragons got so mad at them and started kidnapping maidens and eating people who came to slay them."

"Can't say I blame them; I'd be mad at anyone trying to slay me, too."

"Exactly; they don't understand them, not that _we_ understand them any better, but...I guess we respect that they have a place in this world too, and that if they're here, they have to be here for some good reason." When the panda looked over at his feline friend, he sighed and tried a different approach, "Okay, so...better example: You."

Tai Lung lowered the scroll in his hands and raised a brow. "Me?"

"Yeah, you. I was afraid of you. Even after I defeated you, I was afraid of you. Even when I found you in the Jade Palace after your return, I was afraid of you."

The spotted feline fell silent, then questioned, "Why did you never tell me this until now?"

"At first, because I was still afraid of you, obviously. But after I got to know you, after I started to understand you, I wasn't afraid of you anymore. After that point, it didn't seem like a big deal anymore." Po looked his friend in the eye and smiled warmly at him. "People were afraid of you because they didn't understand why you were so angry, why you went on that rampage. Now, at least, the Valley understands, so they're not afraid anymore."

The snow leopard lowered his gaze back to the parchment, muttering dejectedly, "But I'm still capable of awful things."

Po bluntly replied, "Well yeah, duh. But _everyone _is capable of bad things. Its the ones who are strong enough to _not _do those bad things, that we look up to and call heroes."

"So you're saying I was weak before?"

"Everyone is weak, because everyone has moments of weakness. You're not alone, Tai Lung. You had a moment of weakness, just like everyone else, and that's nothing to be ashamed of."

Tai Lung fell silent, doubting that he had nothing to be ashamed of. He thought this over as he flipped through pages of philosophic texts. This revelation that Po had feared him, even when the panda was the one to offer his hand in friendship, was deeply unsettling, and not something he preferred to think about. So, instead, he focused on what he was reading, or tried to. There was simply too much on his mind. The words and characters on the page seemed to blend together in his vision as his mind wandered...

"Po?"

"Yeah, Tai?"

"Have you ever heard of someone named Asmodei Koshchei?"

"Who?"

"Asmodei Koshchei, he's the bloke who's after us-when the Phoenix appeared to me, she told me his name. I wondered if you might have heard of him."

Po shrugged. "Dunno. All I know is that you told me he was a northern leopard, he used to work for Jiao Shen, and that he has blue eyes. I don't know a lot about the Jiao-all I know is what Dalang said about 'em. And, y'know, personal experience." The panda paused, then glanced back at him, "How do you _not _know who he is? I mean, you were in a military prison for two decades; surely someone had to tell you something about the outside world?"

Tai Lung growled. "Are you forgetting the part where I was literally under a rock for twenty years? I've missed a few things. And like Vachir would have told me anything? Over his dead body. Look, the only reason I thought you might know-aside from being on the outside your whole life-is how obsessed you are with kung fu, surely you've heard something."

Po shook his head. "Sorry, buddy, but I don't. Maybe he doesn't know kung fu?"

"Impossible. No one would challenge us if they didn't know _some _form of kung fu."

"I don't think you're listening," Po said. "I said he probably doesn't know _kung fu_. There are probably other fighting forms not related to kung fu that he knows; if he's a foreigner, there are probably a lot of techniques he knows that we don't. In my vision, he looked like he had been fighting longer than either of us have been alive..."

"In that case, how is he still alive?"

"How is someone like Sun Bear still alive?"

"Good point." He paused. "Do you think he might have something supernatural about him?"

Po shook his head, rolling up a scroll to put away. "I doubt it, but something about him does seem..._off_. Sinister. Not like Dalang's dad; Shen was sinister, but I wouldn't call him evil. Oogway said he was a 'man of little mercies'. This guy in my vision-the blue-eyed guy with the weird name-he seems evil. Like, no reason behind it. Just pure, real, evil. Shen always had a reason for what he did; I think he knew right from wrong, but he just didn't care. I don't think this guy actually _knows _right from wrong."

"More animal than man," Tai Lung said, echoing Oogway and Ming Hua's sentiments. "So we're likely going up against a blue-eyed golden leopard, older than Jiao Shen, perhaps as old as Shifu, who doesn't know kung fu," Tai Lung said, trying to get a mental picture of their opponent, "But who has to know _some_ way to fight, and he has no conscience whatsoever."

"Which means he wouldn't think twice about killing us."

"I hate to break it to you, Po, but there are a lot of people who wouldn't think twice about killing us."

"So what makes this one so different?"

"I don't know." Tai Lung thought about it, then turned to the panda, "Has Oogway spoken to you at all lately?"

"No. Has Ming Hua talked to you?"

"Not a peep. That bothers me, a good bit. She told me that her visitations would get more frequent, but I haven't seen her since our first night here. And you said you hadn't heard from Oogway in nearly two weeks..."

Po finished the thought: "Something's wrong. Something must be very wrong, or they would've told us."

Tai Lung bit his lip and somehow managed to keep his tone under control as he worried, "If its as bad as we fear, they ought to tell us right now! How are we to know that our friends and families aren't in danger as we speak?"

Po opened his mouth to say something, but promptly shut it.

"What?" Tai Lung asked.

"Nothing. Just a stupid thought."

"Po, _please_..."

"I was just thinking..." he said haltingly, "What if its not Oogway or Ming Hua...what if the Phoenix doesn't want you to know what's going on?" An uncomfortable pause followed his suspicion. Then he laughed it off. "I know, its stupid..."

"No," Tai Lung growled. "No, its not." He stood and gathered the red robes closer around him. "I'm getting the answers, right now."

"What?" Po dropped the tome in his hands and tried to block his friend's retreat. "Where're you going? We're supposed to-"

"I don't give a _damn_ what we're supposed to do!" Tai Lung snarled. "That phoenix is supposed to help us, and if she is in any way hindering our progress-"

He was promptly cut off by a loud screech and a rush of wind that upset papers and scrolls, sending the room into a complete disarray. The flames in the brazier fluttered like a candle flame then went out in a wisp of smoke, cloaking them in complete darkness. The two warriors felt a chill that had little to do with the crisp mountain air, the hairs rising on their hackles. Po scanned the darkness, but couldn't locate Tai Lung.

"Tai? Tai, c'mon buddy, where are you?"

"He is with Ming Hua, currently."

Po snapped to attention and turned to find Oogway staring back at him, an enigma through the still-smoking coals. The panda sighed with relief, "Thank goodness, we were getting a little worried..."

"You have right to be worried, Dragon Warrior," Oogway warned, with a haste in his voice that Po had never heard. "Ming Hua and I have, until now, been unable to meet our own terms. There have been developments, many of them, that concern you and your loved ones. I have little time. Time is swiftly running out. Your opponent has amased an army, and is advancing upon the Valley of Peace."

Po barely let him finish when he exclaimed, "_What_? When, how long? How long do we have?"

"Not long," the tortoise said sorrowfully. "You both must leave soon, sooner than I fear you are ready to. My old friend Sun Bear may disagree with me, but the time has come for both you and Tai Lung to assume your destinies."

"How big an army are we talking?" Po asked. "And does the Valley know? Does Shifu? The Five? _Anyone_?"

"No. As of now, you are the only of our allies that know. You, and Sun Bear, whom I will visit in his meditations tonight. Ming Hua is similarly informing Tai Lung of this predicament."

"_Predicament_?" Po asked, aghast. "No, a predicament is trying to choose between noodles or stir fry for dinner. This skeedadles _way_ past 'predicament'!"

"Po," Oogway said in a tone that offered no argument, "Calm down."

"Calm down? Some crazy-evil Manchurian leopard named Asmo-something Whatsisface is bringing not just him, but an entire frickin' _army_ to invade, loot, pillage and rape the Valley, none of our friends know about it, and with me being hundreds of miles away in some place where I can't do anything to stop it, you're telling me to CALM DOWN?"

"Technically, its Asmo-something _Vhats_isface."

"BIG HAIRY DEAL!"

"Po, really, you should try to calm yourself. You don't want Shifu's high blood pressure."

Po tried very hard to focus on a meditative breath, taking in deep, quick breaths and letting them out as slowly as he could. "Okay...just answer me this: is Tai freaking out like I am?"

"Knowing him as I do, I would bet money on it."

"How can you be so calm about this?" he demanded. "Master Oogway, _how_ can you be so calm? Even when certain doom is staring you in the face, how do you not freak out about it? How do you do it?"

What Oogway told him would stick with him for the rest of his life, and shape how he viewed his world...and his future.

"I keep calm because I must. That does not make me immune to fear, but I keep a cool head because for so long, so many people depended on me. Many people depend on you, too. The torch has been passed, so to speak. The honor of protecting the Valley is now yours, as are all the responsibilities thereof. But Sun Bear was right: you try to please everyone. You cannot please everyone, because everyone cannot be pleased all the time. Dragon Warrior, in order to assume your destiny, the key—and this is very important—is to accept what you cannot change, know to change what you can, and know the difference between the two. This, ultimately, will bring you the peace you seek."

Po ran it over in his head. Accept what he couldn't change, change what he could, and know how to tell the difference. Well, didn't entirely answer his question, but it did make him feel better.

"How much time do we have?"

"The same as before," Oogway answered. "Winter solstice. Be ready."

And suddenly the flames in the brazier lit back up into a flume of light and smoke, shocking the panda, who made a rather bearish noise of surprise. Tai Lung, similarly, yowled like a cat with a scorched tail when the flames burst back to life. In the sudden light that temporarily blinded them, the warriors shared a look between them, and, though they lacked the mental link that Oogway and Sun Bear had, they each knew what the other was thinking. Tai Lung finally spoke up:

"What the deuce was _that_?"

* * *

"I don't think we're ready for this."

"Of course we're not ready, we're never going to be ready at this rate."

"You sure we're not being impatient here?"

"Po: big-arse army, armed to the teeth, about to invade the Valley of Peace—I wonder, though, how we can still call it the 'Valley of Peace' after-"

"You made your point, now quit it," Po snapped. They were halfway up the slope to the "forbidden pagoda" to get some "one-on-one time" with the Phoenix, and hopefully find Sun Bear. He wasn't in his quarters, or the library, nor was he indulging in a midnight snack (Po's last-ditch idea, which, he admitted, was largely inspired by his own stomach's rumblings). It was the last possible place to look. When Po snapped at him, Tai Lung turned and frowned at him. The panda sheepishly apologized, "Sorry, you know how I get when I haven't eaten."

"Regrettably."

"You sure its cool for us to be up here, though? I mean, with Sun Bear's warning..." Po asked, looking around warily.

"And if I _am_ the stinking Phoenix Warrior, I highly doubt the phoenixes are going to try and peck me to death," Tai Lung sarcastically replied. "Now lets get the devil up there and figure out what the flip is going on."

"Okay, wait...'stinking', 'devil' and 'flip'?"

"Well I can't keep swearing—I'll be out of money in no time. And don't count the one from the library."

"Why would I? I was thinking the same thing."

They reached the upper courtyard and looked out through the portal at the end of the tunnel. The courtyard was dark but for seven flames burning in sconces shaped like birds' nests, but two red lanterns burned on either side of the pagoda doors. Someone was inside. Taking a chance, Tai Lung boldly stepped out into the courtyard, advanced seven paces, then stopped. He readied himself for an attack, the hair on the back of his neck rising with the feeling that he was being watched. He looked out over the courtyard, then up the slope, around the rocks, the far corners hidden by dancing shadows from the flickering flames.

After a long, tense moment, nothing happened. Not one to jinx anything (at least now), Tai Lung beckoned Po to follow him, and the two of them quickly dashed straight to the pagoda doors. As they ran, they both heard the singing, the flapping of wings, but neither of them looked back to see what was chasing them. They made it to the pagoda doors and threw themselves against them-

-only to tumble onto the interior floor when First Brother opened the door just as they were about to barge in. The old lion blinked a few times in surprise, then glanced out at the empty, quiet courtyard. Then he smirked down at Tai Lung. "Careful now. Don't want to make a habit of charging doors like that."

"I'll bear that in mind. Thank you."

Po picked himself up and rubbed his smarting rump. "What're you doing up here?"

"Offering Master Sun Bear some company," First Brother said. He closed the doors with a solemness not lost on the panda and snow leopard.

"How is he?" Po asked.

First Brother sighed through his nose, his old shoulders heaving under his heavy robes. "He's not were meditating in there, trying to speak to the Phoenix, allow her to speak to us, as she has in times of great distress...then he suddenly told me to leave and lock the door behind me. I've been waiting for him to call me back, but its been over an hour."

Po looked at Tai Lung, who nodded once. The snow leopard picked himself up, then strode over to the door, pressing his palm against the heavy lock.

"How much has he told you?" he asked the lion.

First Brother held his tongue, for fear of their reactions. When he finally trusted himself to speak, the elder said, "His time is very, very near. I fear this is his last night." He thought about it, then sighed heavily. "Oh the hell with it." The lion strode forward, shoving the key into the lock and twisting it. He pushed open the doors and pointed inward. "Go. Of anyone, he would like to see you most of all."

Tai Lung nodded, turning back to Po, who only gave him an encouraging nod and smile. The snow leopard would have to do this on his own. Tai Lung took in a deep breath and stepped into the inner sanctum.

What he saw took his breath away. The walls were painted, from floor to ceiling, with scenes of heaven at the top, scenes of the earthly realm in the middle, and scenes of hell at the bottom, nearest the floor. The phoenix flew throughout each scene, even offering solace to those poor souls suffering in the Lakes of Fire and Blood in Hell. The floor was red marble, something he had never seen before, and the ceiling had a mosaic of the phoenix with six offspring flying around her in a continuous circle, representing a mandala wheel.

But what truly impressed him, and made him want to fall to his knees and bow, was the statue of the phoenix resting atop the altar. He had never seen anything so rich, so extravagant, but that wasn't the point. Here, the point was to come as close to the original as mortal hands could make. Having seen the bird with his own eyes, Tai Lung could see the inconsistencies and flaws in the design. The body made of rubies was the wrong shade; the phoenix shined much brighter. The gold in the tail feathers and beak and legs were nowhere near the perfection he had seen. But, for what materials the builders had, they had done as well as they could.

Sun Bear was sitting on the floor, on his old, worn yoga mat, in full lotus position, but his eyes were open. He was staring up at the statue. He didn't bother to turn around to look at Tai Lung as the snow leopard came nearer.

"I know what you're thinking," Sun Bear said, and Tai Lung was struck more by not the sudden words, but by how...fragile they sounded. As he got closer, he now saw why, and it was all he could do to not allow his jaw to drop.

Sun Bear was now nearly ghostly white. He still breathed, his heart still beat, but he looked even more withered than before. He looked frail and weak, but the fire still burned in his eyes; he knew his body was failing, and he was none too happy about that. He wasn't ready to give up. Tai Lung knew right then that he didn't want to live to be so old. He knew he couldn't live knowing his strength was completely sapped from him, that he had lost all independence. That terrified him more than tightly enclosed spaces. More than going back to prison. More than asking Mei Xing to marry him (yes, he had been terrified to do that, he was man enough to admit it).

Where before there were hints of darker fur, almost pitch black in his youth, now it looked as if Sun Bear had always been white-furred. His whole body drooped, and he had a hard time sitting straight.

"What am I thinking?" Tai Lung finally asked.

"The statue. It's nowhere near as glorious as the original."

"No. No it is not."

Sun Bear sighed and rubbed his eyes, now looking closer to his age than ever. "I've just finished speaking with Oogway. This is my last night. He is waiting for me on the other side. He will meet me at Heaven's gate, along with all the people we knew and loved in our lifetime who passed before us." The old master inhaled then exhaled heavily. "There is comfort there."

Tai Lung silently kneeled next to him, looking up at the altar once, then looking again at his master. Sun Bear wearily turned his head and offered him a small smile. "I thought it would be worse than this, honestly. It feels...almost like going to sleep."

Tai Lung bit his lip, trying very, very hard not to say anything tactless. "Do you? Want to sleep, I mean?"

Sun Bear roughly chuckled, but it quickly turned into a hacking cough. Tai Lung gently patted his back until he stopped coughing. "No," the old bear said, "No, I can't sleep tonight, not yet. I have yet two more things to do before I lay myself down. The first is to get you and Po ready for the journey home. You will leave with some documents to help you develop your mental link to each other; I will help open the portal to get you there. The second, of course, is to give you your destiny." And here he pointed, up at the statue. Tai Lung saw the precious treasure perched in the phoenix's beak:

The Phoenix Scroll.

He couldn't help but feel a little anxiety. The last time some old master said he would give him a scroll, Tai Lung had been sorely disappointed. In some odd way, he suspected that if he truly dreaded it, it may come to pass anyway, while if he looked forward to it, it would disappoint him, or never happen...such was the story of his life.

But his eyes were more drawn towards his master, who looked wearier than seemed appropriate. Tai Lung cleared his throat.

"If its alright with you, Master," he said. "I will stay by your side...until the end, if you wish it."

"How very altrusistic of you."

The snow leopard smiled a little, hopeful that the sarcastic joke was a sign that Sun Bear hadn't given up yet. "So I'm guessing you do?"

Sun Bear paused, silent, and for the first time, he was hesitant to ask something of his pupil. Finally, he said, "It is the custom where I am from that we burn our dead. The body is only a vessel for the soul, and once the soul departs it, it is simply a shell, like a snake's skin that is shed so regularly. It is custom for the first born son to light the pyre. As I have no children of my own..."

Tai Lung placed his hand over the old bear's, gently squeezing as tears glistened in his eyes. He choked back his emotion to answer him as he bowed his head. "I would be honored, Master."

Sun Bear smiled at him. "I was almost afraid to ask this of you. I know your customs are to bury the dead and honor them that way..."

"This is important to you. I will honor you as you deserve to be honored." Tai Lung thought about it a moment, then asked, "This also has something to do with the Phoenix legend too, doesn't it?"

Sun Bear nodded, "That it does. To rise from the ashes of one's own destruction, they are born anew. Who knows, for all we know, I could be reincarnated as your child."

"Gods help us all."

They both laughed at the thought of it, but it wasn't as depressing as it could have been. In some strange way, Tai Lung was glad they were having this conversation. It left out a lot of guess work, and strangely put him at ease, knowing that everything was planned out in advance.

Sun Bear tugged on the snow leopard's robes and reached for his bamboo staff. He leaned heavily on it until Tai Lung helped him stand. The old bear faltered and nearly collapsed a couple times before he was able to stand on his own, stooped over though he was. He leaned much more heavily on his staff than the snow leopard had ever seen him before, and despite his master's protests, Tai Lung kept a careful hold on him lest he stumble again.

"Come," the old master said. "The sun will soon rise, and I have one more lesson to teach. And, if I am lucky, I will make sure you leave here with a smile and happy memories instead of a frown and regrets."

* * *

Just before the twilight of dawn, the three of them entered the forbidden courtyard. The day promised to be gloomy and grey, fitting for the event that was supposed to take place, if Sun Bear had any say about it. The seven torches still blazed in their sconces, and Sun Bear had them sit opposite each other on the stones. There was a conveniently nearby boulder that had fallen to the courtyard floor from the tip top of the peak, and he eased himself into a sitting position on the rock. First Brother stayed close to the pagoda, standing and watching in case he was needed.

"This, gentlemen," Sun Bear said as he slowly sat on top of the boulder, "is the trust exercise to end all trust exercises. It's a new form of spiritual help that I've developed…I'm thinking of calling it 'group therapy'. Anyhow, we are going to break down the barriers keeping the two of you from forming the same mental link that Oogway and I shared. What's holding you back are the secrets you two keep from each other, and today, those secrets will come to light."

"But isn't there a good reason to keep these secrets?" Po asked, looking a bit nervous. He had mercifully not asked any questions until this point. He had noticed Sun Bear's alarmingly sudden frail state, but out of respect didn't say anything. Yet he instinctively knew the old bear's time was very, very near. Even Tai Lung had settled into a stony silence.

"Your spiritual development hinges on releasing these secrets that hold you down. Neither of you will be able to attain the abilities you will need to defeat this threat until you let go of the negative forces inside you.

"Now, this is a safe place, a non-judgmental place," the old master assured them. "Instead of judging each other or getting angry, you must both encourage the other. Even a single, small, seemingly insignificant secret is the stepping stone to a stronger friendship."

"In other words," Po said, "Confession is good for the soul."

"Hmm…" the old bear mused. " 'Confession is good for the soul'…short, sweet and to the point. I like it. Very well, carry on. Start with small ones, then work your way up."

Po and Tai Lung sat cross-legged across from each other, both warriors taking in deep breaths. They stared into each other's eyes, each wondering which one would begin. Po decided to take the initiative and cleared his throat.

"Remember that apricot pastry you made last year?"

Tai Lung furrowed his brows, "You mean the one you said you really liked?"

"Yeah…" Po said, rubbing the back of his neck. "It actually…sucked. Like, it sucked hard. Really hard. It sucked really, _really_ hard. Sorry. You just seemed so proud to have made up your own recipe; I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

Tai Lung thought about it, then nodded. "All right…actually, it _is_ all right. I never really liked apricots anyway."

"Seriously though, never ever make that thing again."

"All right."

"I thought Mantis or Monkey had made it instead of you."

"I _get_ it, Po, thanks."

"Your turn," the panda said.

Tai Lung thought for a moment, then his face flushed bright red. "Remember when I got on your case about washing your pits in the Pool of Sacred Tears?"

"Yeah…"

"I…did something worse."

Po's jaw dropped. "You didn't—!"

"I did...skinny-dipping," he added for Sun Bear's understanding, "…just to see if I could get away with it." The snow leopard paused. "You know, I never told _anyone_ about that."

"How did it feel?" Sun Bear asked.

"It felt…really good," Tai Lung smiled.

Sun Bear smiled and nodded. "Good. Po, your turn."

And so the rest of the morning went on, and as the sun rose, so did the severity of the confessions, ranging from shameful secrets to hilarious—and most certainly embarrassing—revelations.

"You _snogged_ a doll of Tigress?"

"It's called an _action figure_, and _shut up_!"

"No, really, a _doll_?" the snow leopard asked.

"Action figure."

"_Whatever_."

"Like you never looked at her like that!"

"Of _course_ I didn't! She's technically my sister, you sick freak!"

"Sick freak?"

"You heard me!"

Po frowned and took a cheap shot: "Oh yeah? At least I don't color code and iron my underwear!"

Sun Bear had to bite down on his fist to keep from laughing. Tai Lung gasped at the panda, then glared and accused, "You swore you'd _never_ talk about that!"

Po addressed Sun Bear, "And he folds his _socks_!"

"_Everyone_ folds their socks!" Tai Lung countered.

"Okay, see..." Po pointed out, "Here's the difference between 'everyone' and _you_. _You_ actually put two socks together, fold them in half, then neatly _stack_ them in a drawer. Every _normal_ person just rolls the cuffs down _over_ the socks and _stuffs_ them in a drawer."

"Why would _anyone_ do that? You'll just stretch out the sock cuffs that way!"

"In all sincerity," Sun Bear interrupted, then stared down at Tai Lung and started chuckling, "You iron your _underwear_?"

"Could we move on?" the snow leopard dourly asked.

And later in the morning, shortly before the gong rang to awaken the monks below...

"Bull, you didn't shoplift."

"Yeah, I did," Po said. "From Mr. Guang's stand."

"Mr. Guang sells fine art, not kung fu portraits like what you collect," Tai Lung pointed out. "So what did you steal, if you actually did?"

Po blushed bright red and averted his gaze. "Porn."

Tai Lung blinked in surprise. "…Wait, really?"

"Yeah."

"No, really, he sells _pornography_?"

"He's got it hidden away behind a curtain, but yeah."

"Why in Yanluo's name did you keep _this_ from me?" the snow cat demanded. "Come on, panda, details, details!"

"Lets keep it moving, boys," Sun Bear said shortly, but his tone betrayed that he was glad to see it turning out so well.

"Your turn," Po said to Tai Lung. Now the snow leopard had gone completely silent. He had been skirting around this one confession for too long…well, two confessions. But these two deep dark secrets would likely negatively affect his relationship with the panda, and, if their survival and defeat of Asmodei Koshchei depended solely on their partnership…Tai Lung couldn't risk ruining it. Besides, this confession game had been really fun, and he was about to suck the fun right out of it. But if they were to set up a telepathic link that could very well save their lives…he had to tell at least one of them. And for the time being…it would be this one.

"Just so we're clear," he asked Sun Bear. "This is a safe place, and if I say something that could hurt his feelings…that doesn't change anything?"

"That's right," Sun Bear nodded. "Po, are you prepared to hear something that may hurt? And if that happens, are you prepared to forgive your friend?"

"You still think I'm too fat to be a warrior, don't you?" Po asked dismally.

"No!" Tai Lung said. "No, gods no, you've proved to be a better warrior than I am, on many occasions! But…please, just promise me you'll forgive me and not think less of me for keeping this from you."

Po spoke up during the long pause that followed. "Is this about prison?"

Tai Lung swallowed hard. "Not…not exactly. I suppose it has…something to do with it. For twenty years, I hadn't known a single kind soul, no companionship whatsoever, and when I first got out of jail, I…well, let's just say my blood was running a little hot…" He looked up at the panda's face and saw that Po was trying to piece it together. "After I survived the Wuxi finger hold, and started my recovery, I…entertained certain…thoughts…about a certain individual…"

His eyes and Po's eyes locked…and that was when both males realized—

"Holy crap," Po gasped.

"What—no, Po, _NO_! _Not_ you!"

"Then who… Holy crap—it was _Dalang_?"

"NO! Damn it, panda, I'm straight!" He stopped and turned to Sun Bear, "Do I owe anything for swears while in therapy?"

"I'll let it slide," the old master said. "Please continue."

Tai Lung took a deep breath and let it all out. "No, Po, it…it was Su Lin." He held his breath and waited for the storm to hit.

Po stared at him, aghast, blinking in shock. "Su Lin? _My_ Su Lin? Su Lin, my _girlfriend_?"

"She wasn't your girlfriend at the time," the snow leopard gently reminded, but still cowed to the panda's increasingly negative vibe. There had been a very good reason to keep this secret from him…and the panda's reaction _was_ that very reason.

Po gained control over his shock then yelled, "I can't _believe_ you—she's almost twenty years younger than you, you...cradle robber!"

"Don't call me that! I'm not _that_ old!" Tai Lung snarled. "And I had a crush on her _long_ before you came along, and _long_ before Mei and I were an item!"

"I should've known," Po said, angrily shaking his head. "That spin-the-bottle game…"

"Po…"

"I should have _known_ it from the way you kissed her…"

"Po, don't get mad at her—she never reciprocated my—"

"I'm not mad at her, _cat_," Po said sharply. "I'm mad at _you_! How could you _do_ this?"

"How could I do _what_? Develop feelings for her? For hell's sake, Po, it's not like I shagged her!"

As fast as Sun Bear was, even he was too slow now to stop Po's fist from making contact with Tai Lung's face. The snow leopard fell flat on his back, brought his hand up to his nose to discover blood coming from his nostrils. The panda, now visibly enraged, stood and glared down at the snow leopard, who stared back in absolute awe at the bear's sudden turn…

"I _trusted_ you, Tai Lung. And to think I let you have all those training sessions _alone_ with her…"

"Didn't you hear me? We never did anything!" the snow leopard shouted in his defense. He slowly picked himself up, pressing his fingers against his nose to stop the blood flow, and said through a partially pinched nose, "I _never_ touched her, not once! Did I think about it? Sure. Did I have adult fantasies about her? You're damn right I did! But the minute I saw she cared for _you_ and not me, I let the matter _drop_. She loves _you_, Po, and all things considered, I never had a fucking chance with her!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Po contested. "_Look_ at you—you're strong, handsome, smart…women trip all over themselves to get to you! What do _I_ have?"

"Everything I _don't_, you twit!"

This seemed to somehow calm the panda down considerably. The last statement had taken him by complete surprise…which made it easy for Tai Lung to grab him and keep him in a headlock.

Po struggled against the cat's grip and clawed at him, snorting and growling, "Damn it, Tai, l'eggo!"

"Not until you calm down!" the snow leopard snapped. "I'm not letting go until you calm down, or share another secret of equal or lesser value—"

"You know," Sun Bear spoke up, "I suggest you two just drop it; you've made excellent progress, but—"

"_Hell_ no," Tai Lung growled at the master. "I plucked out something that's been eating at me for two damn years! It's _his_ turn!"

Po struggled a bit in the snow leopard's grip, angrily thinking that he didn't have a secret so groundbreaking that it could harm their friendship…but then he remembered his most recent omission, and he swiftly settled down. The panda swallowed hard, not sure how his friend would take this confession:

"Those guards back at the gatehouse, at the entrance to the Thread of Hope…they gave me a note, warning me about this guy named Captain Zang Deshi…who wanted to arrest you for murdering the Anvil of Heaven."

Tai Lung released him, staring at him with an accusatory look. "You…you kept this from me? How could—you kept _that_ from me?"

"How is this any different from—" Po started to ask.

"_My_ secret was a love and sex matter. Yours is life or death—it's just a _teensy_ bit more important!" Tai Lung sarcastically replied.

"I forgot to tell you about it, okay?" Po shouted.

"Oh, you _forgot_! That's all well and good, then, isn't it? So when I find myself at the business end of an executioner's ax, the best you can say is _you forgot_?"

"What's the big deal? Its just one guy—"

"And if he means to arrest me, he's got to have back-up, Po!" Tai Lung growled. "Now I've got more enemies than I need, and I know for a fact that—gods," he abruptly stopped. "No…gods in heaven, _no_. I need to leave. I need to go back, right now!"

Sun Bear stopped him, standing as quickly as his quickly aging body would allow. "Hold, warrior, just one moment. Why must you leave?"

"Master," Tai Lung said, all rage immediately drained, "If this Captain seeks to arrest me, he could harm my family in the process. For all I know, he could be working for this Amur leopard our visions have warned us about—"

"Amur leopard?" Sun Bear's face had paled even further than it already was, then he looked between the snow leopard and the panda. "A leopard, from Siberia, with blue-green eyes and savage temper?"

"Yeah…" Po said, now sobered. "Do you know who it is?"

"You mean Asmodei Koshchei? Yes, regrettably. Come," he said, grabbing Tai Lung's arm. "I thought we had more time, but unfortunately, you need to leave sooner than we thought. If you want to stop the impending storm from being worse than it already is, you both need to leave by this afternoon, no later than nightfall."

"But I haven't learned everything I need to learn," Tai Lung protested. "I was supposed to learn the things all men must learn."

"And you think learning stops after you've finished school? No, Tenzin, no one ever stops learning. But before you go, there's something that I need to bestow upon you…the final proof that you are, in fact, my successor."

He didn't need to finish; Tai Lung did it for him: "The Phoenix Scroll."

* * *

This time even Po was allowed into the inner sanctum. He stood towards the back with First Brother, who stood reverently silent as the original Phoenix Warrior bestowed the sacred artifact upon his successor.

Sun Bear still leaned heavily on his staff, which was starting to bend under his weight. He waved Tai Lung off him, then pointed up to the encased scroll in the Phoenix's beak.

"All you must do is take the scroll from her beak."

Tai Lung glanced at him. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"What's the catch?"

"No catch."

"I call bull. It's never that simple with you."

"You're right, it's not. I hope I was right about you. If you can lift the scroll from the statue's beak as effortlessly as lifting a feather, and as long as it does not scald your hands straight down to the bone, it is final, undeniable proof that you are my successor."

"Wait," the snow leopard said, "You mean to tell me that the fail-safes for this thing are that it literally scalds someone's hands off and weighs a fair few kilos if they happen to be unworthy?"

"Pretty much."

"Well, my good sir, you thought of everything."

"Oh, and I ought to warn you, the scroll's case is booby trapped."

"Of course it is."

"Mind not to touch the end with the jade enlaid in the stopper. There are little needles hidden in there that will prick you and poison you."

Tai Lung stared at him, thinking off all the booby traps that protected the Dragon scroll: the bottomless moon pool, the statue set into the ceiling, and not to mention all the trick-shelves that housed the scrolls...not that he had tested that rumor himself, mind. "And I thought Oogway had overkill."

Sun Bear smirked triumphantly. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Tai Lung truly didn't know. He had waited so long for this moment, that now that it had finally arrived, he wasn't sure what to do. He knew what was expected of him, and he knew he had limited time to do so, but he still hesitated. In the back of his mind, he recalled that his last brush with a sacred mystical scroll had yielded less-than-stellar results... _It's nothing!_ he had cried, feeling absolutely defeated, that he had suffered so much and trained so hard for that life-changing moment that would elevate him higher than any man before him...and he had fallen so, so far.

_Even if you reach for the moon and miss, you still land among the stars,_ a voice in his head told him...a voice that sounded suspiciously like Po.

Tai Lung whirled around and stared at the panda, who stared back with equal surprise. Had that...had that been...? Tai Lung shook himself out of it. It wasn't possible...well, it was, but they had in no way gotten far enough to apply those lessons yet. But that voice, those words...'you still land among the stars'...it brought an odd comfort to him. For so long, Tai Lung wanted that moon, so to speak, and had fought for and prayed for it that accepting anything less would be a tragedy, and ultimately mean he was unworthy. His self-esteem couldn't take another blow like that.

With a deep breath, he stepped forward, ascending the small set of steps leading up to the altar, and stood before the statue. His eyes fell on the encased scroll, his prize, still perched precariously in the bird's beak. Another deep breath, he climbed atop the altar after bowing deeply in reverence to the phoenix. As he reached for the scroll, he kept thinking—praying—_please, please forgive me, please let this lead to something better_—and when his fingers brushed against the scroll's case, it slid from the statue's beak as simply and fluidly as the Dragon Scroll had fallen to Po. A literal gift from Heaven. And Tai Lung's arm shot out to catch the case—he held his breath.

The weight of the scroll fell into his palm, and he quickly wrapped his fingers around the cylinder.

The cylinder was ice cold, like the mountain air around him, and it was so light in his hand that he doubted there was anything inside.

The snow leopard stared down at the scroll, the Phoenix Scroll, and felt something odd come over him. Like something had shifted, that something had fallen upon his shoulders, like a mantle or a crown, and the responsibilities that came with them. This scroll, this text, was his armor he would wear to war, the crown he would bear for rest of his days, and unlike the exhilaration he felt from first holding the Dragon Scroll...

"I don't want this."

Po's jaw dropped. First Brother couldn't stifle an alarmed gasp. Sun Bear stayed silent, waiting for Tai Lung to continue.

"I don't want this," he repeated, hopping down from the altar. "I know, I _know_—I worked so hard to get this far, and it is an honor to be even _named_ the Phoenix Warrior...but I don't know that I am worthy, or that I even want..._this_."

"You mean," Sun Bear said. "You don't know that, after suffering so much and living such a life, that you want to continue living the life that got you here in the first place?"

"I wanted to quit kung fu," he said. "But I guess I don't have a choice now, do I? 'One often meets one's destiny on the road he takes to avoid it'; that's what Oogway said."

The old master nodded. "That he did. And he was right. This is your destiny. And do you know why?"

The snow leopard shook his head, still staring down at the gilded metal case, enlaid with red jasper and stoppered with gold orbs, one enlaid with jade, the other enlaid with strings of rubies. The cylinder bore the outline of a phoenix in gold faience. It seemed almost gaudy in his eyes now.

Sun Bear placed his bony hand over the scroll and instructed him to look in his eyes. "This is your destiny, and you are worthy. You think you would be an awful Warrior, and that you no longer have the stomach for war...and that is why you will be the best warrior in China."

Tai Lung looked back, then down at the scroll. "You have more faith in me than I deserve."

"Funny," Sun Bear said. "That's exactly what I said to _her_. If you desire, you can wait until the time feels right to you to read the scroll. I will not hold it against you if you decide not to read it right away."

The snow leopard smiled a little, but ultimately looked back at Po, who still watched his friend carefully. He sighed, "I guess there is nothing else for it, is it? This is undeniable proof, isn't it?"

"The proof has always been there," Sun Bear said. "You were just too much of a knucklehead to notice it and recognize it for what it was." He clapped his hand on Tai Lung's shoulder and squeezed, but to Tai Lung, it felt weak and so very unlike the old master's grip. He was truly fading fast.

Seemingly knowing what he intended, Sun Bear nodded and directed him to the door. "Not much more time. Lets get you your things back, get provisions for you, and get you ready for your journey home. You have much waiting for you."

He turned to Po, "For the sake of present business, you will have to go on ahead, descend the mountain and wait for your brother-in-arms in the village. You will not wait long, that I can assure you."

"That's actually not very assuring," Po said. "But if you are at peace with it, so am I."

The old bear snorted, "A typical Oogway answer." He paused. "Thank you, Dragon Warrior."

* * *

News that the duo were leaving, and that day, travelled quickly through the temple, which was not terribly surprising, considering how few lived up there. Third Brother retrieved their belongings from storage, and handed them their gray clothes they had worn from the Valley of Peace. Fourth Brother invoked his power over the kitchens and provided them with ample enough provisions to get them to Yunnan. "It will get you to the Diqing prefecture," he told them. "They have a large market there, and you will be able to find enough to get you home."

By mid-morning on that cold, dreary day, with gunmetal grey clouds swirling above their heads, the entire monastery had turned out to see off the warriors. Sun Bear was the last to arrive, having gone to the library first to instruct the scribes on something. As agreed, Po would go on ahead, and wait for Tai Lung to join him. The snow leopard, meanwhile, would stay until Sun Bear's passing, and participate in the funeral. Even still, he prepared his bag for departure at a moment's notice. He would stay to light the fire, he decided, but he would not stay to see the rest of it through. He knew he wasn't strong enough to start a journey out like that, so inauspiciously.

Sun Bear, however, did not see it that way: "You're setting my soul free. Consider that after I die. Believe me, Phoenix Warrior, you are doing me a favor.

"Now, before I let you go, there is something I must warn you about…" Sun Bear said with great gravity at the temple gates. "While it feels like you have spent only a month here, in reality, a year has passed…"

Tai Lung's stomach sank. "WHAT?"

A year? He'd been gone a _year_? What about his wife? Mei Xing had given birth, and he wasn't there for her! What about the Valley? Their enemies could have already decimated it, perhaps completely destroyed it, and they hadn't been there to stop them! Suddenly, the snow leopard began to feel like he would be violently ill.

The old bear snorted once, then let out a loud hoot as he laughed. First Brother just groaned and put his face in his hand and shook his head. Still laughing and slapping his knee, however, Sun Bear said,

"Hah! I've been using that joke for nine hundred years and it _never_ gets old!" then for the snow leopard's benefit, he immediately sobered, "But seriously, it has only been a month."

Tai Lung gritted his teeth and looked like he was holding back a torrent of four-letter words. So Po stood in for him: "You are a mean old bastard, you know that?"

"Four _jiao_. And yes, I know. But come on, _look_ at him," he said, pointing at the snow leopard with a chuckle. "He makes it so easy."

Po sighed and bowed to the master, stepping back to allow the original Phoenix Warrior to offer guidance to his successor:

"Remember my advice from earlier, do not open the Phoenix Scroll until you feel the time is right in your heart. The secret of the scroll, as I've said, would destroy empires, and bring the proudest men to their knees; a secret like this is not to be treated lightly. But you will need it in the coming days, for these are dark days ahead of you." Sun Bear sighed and looked back over his shoulder at the monks and novices huddled around the door. "The sun is quickly setting on my time, whereas your sun is rising ever higher. Someday you will need to name your own successor, and when that day comes, I pray that you will be as satisfied and hopeful in your choice as I am in mine."

Tai Lung smiled; this was as close to a compliment as the old master would ever give him. But still he frowned and asked, "Does this mean you'll…die soon? As in, _soon_ soon?"

"Everyone dies, Phoenix Warrior, some just take longer than others to meet that fate, remember? When my time comes to lay myself down on my death bed, you will know it, but do us both a favor and don't mourn for me. I had a good life…" he frowned, "And frankly, I've put up with a lot of crap in my time, so I'll be happy for an end to it!"

"Regular ray of sunshine, you are," the snow leopard dryly said.

"We have that much in common, remember?" The old bear placed his bony hand on the snow leopard's shoulder and gently squeezed. "Be safe, be smart, and above all, never, _ever_ lose faith—sometimes its all you'll have."

Tai Lung nodded, and bowed reverently. "Thank you, Master. I will heed your advice."

"One more thing."

"Yes, Master?"

Sun Bear leaned in and whispered, "Just between us, never trust anyone from the Haijin province. Lousy tipping isn't the only thing they're known for."

"Right."

Stepping away, the old bear effortlessly picked up their rucksacks and handed them back. "As promised, here are your possessions, untouched…except for the money bags to pay your Swear Jar tab."

"Saw that one coming," Po sighed as he accepted his parcel.

"Hmm, still seems heavier than it did when we arrived," Tai Lung grunted as he shouldered his pack.

"We put extra provisions in for you," First Brother explained. "Even if the weather stays clear, it's a long while before you can find another place with ample food stores."

"Aw, you guys didn't have to do that," Po smiled. "But thanks all the same."

Sun Bear put his hand on their shoulders and tugged gently. "A word, warriors, before you depart…" he pulled them to the side outside the gate and said in low tones, "Follow my instructions to the letter—first, do not open the Phoenix Scroll until you believe in your heart that you are ready for it."

The snow leopard nodded, "Of course."

"Second, do not—and I can not stress this enough—do NOT take the Red Bird Pass home."

"What?" Flabbergasted, Po countered, "But…but that was the fastest route! If this Asmodei guy is really on his way to the Valley, we need to intercept him—"

"Use the brain Heaven gave you, Dragon Warrior!" Sun Bear hissed. "You may have taken that road to get here, but mark me, this Captain Zang will expect you to take this road home. Do not fall for that trap. Go further north, and cross the border at the corner of Yunnan; stick to the Diqing prefecture and pass through mid-Sichuan. That part will be mountainous and a bit more treacherous in places, but you'll be less likely to encounter trouble from Imperial forces there."

"He's got a point," Tai Lung said. "The further we stay from heavily populated areas, the safer we'll be. Besides, I was able to make it from Mongolia to the Valley in a week's time—if we stick to that pace—"

"We stick to _that_ pace," Po said flatly, "I'll be dead before we even get there."

"Not with the muscle you've gained," the snow leopard said, poking the bear in his now less-obtrusive belly. "You'll be able to keep up."

_If you say so_, Po thought. With one last bow to Sun Bear, the panda straightened, looking sorrowfully at the old master. "Thank you, again, for everything. I wish there was more I could do..."

"You've done enough," the old bear said with a smile. "Truly, I am the one who should be thanking you; you made my last days some of the most enjoyable of my life."

Throwing propriety out the window, Po strode forward and hugged the old master. Sun Bear, to his credit, rolled with it, and hugged him back. When Po let go, he looked between Sun Bear and Tai Lung, who already appeared sober at the thought of what he would do later that day, and perhaps that night. Po sighed and shouldered his rucksack, then turned to the door to make his way down the mountain...

He didn't get far.

They turned to the closed gates at the sound of the pounding. Whoever was at the door did not bother to ring the gong. An icy chill fell across the courtyard as the monks looked between themselves with questioning, worried gazes. Sun Bear held up his hand to stall any noises, but he need not have bothered.

After a long, tense, moment, the pounding came again, louder, more forceful, with booms that echoed off the peaks and forced their stomachs to sink. Po and Tai Lung shared a nervous look. This wasn't good.

Sun Bear beckoned to First Brother and pulled him close, whispering in his ear. The lion's face paled, but he nodded and started quietly herding the monks away to the far end of the courtyard. He grabbed the two travelling warriors along the way.

"You're staying close to us," the old lion said. "Whatever this is about, it won't be good."

"What's going on?" Po asked. "Are we under attack?"

"I don't know, but Master Sun Bear will find out. Until we know for sure, plan as if you are going to escape with us."

"Escape?"

Tai Lung answered Po's fretful look. "Sun Bear said there are many secret passages in this mountain; one of them has to get us down to the foot, away from any trouble." He turned to First Brother, "Why are we running? This is a fortress, and these monks are trained to fight."

He got his answer when the heavy gates creaked open. The Warriors turned to the door, gawking at the mass of heavily armed soldiers bearing a Chinese flag...and Sun Bear standing in front of the column, the sole challenger.

"You're about a fifty miles outside your jurisdiction, gentlemen," he began congenially enough. "And this is a monastery. A holy place. There is sanctuary here for those who seek it, and enter of their own free will."

Leading the pack was a bulky ox, who stomped forward and snorted steam onto the old bear's face. "Stand aside, old man. We're here for Tai Lung. A snow leopard, yellow eyes, about six feet tall, can snap an ancient oak tree like a toothpick."

Sun Bear glared back up at him. "Yes, he is here. He has sanctuary here. If it is violence you promise, then you may not enter."

"I'm not fucking around, old man!" the ox snapped, thrusting a torch into the bear's face and singing his whiskers, but the old master didn't flinch. The ox was winded, clearly unhappy that he had spent all night and most of that day climbing up a hellish crag, and was becoming increasingly irritated that this old, skinny monk was standing in his way. Sun Bear, however, showed no signs of moving, no signs that the fire directly in front of him was hurting him, nor of giving away his successor.

"You cannot have him. He is my student, and I am not like Shifu - I don't forsake those who put their trust in me. If you want him so much..."

He freely extracted his long black claws, shining like jet in the firelight. With a simple swinging motion of his arms, he drew the fire straight from the torch and into his hands; each hand lit up with crackling flames. The soldiers drew back in alarm as their commander dropped the now-flameless torch, and jumped forward to put the fire out, thinking the old man had caught fire. But he stopped short when he noticed the flames were only concentrated to the bear's hands, and that a sudden sharp, hellish heat had invaded the bear's dark eyes. The ox commander drew back even further when the old master growled,

"If you want Tai Lung, you can take him over my charred, dead body."

Tai Lung stared at the old bear, who wielded this yellow-orange fire as effortlessly and expertly as he himself had done in his fight against Shifu. Master Sun Bear had stood up for him, something Shifu had never done. When Tai Lung had been carted away to prison, Shifu wasn't even there to say goodbye. Shifu hadn't spoken up about the Dragon Scroll, and though now he knew why he wasn't worthy of that scroll, it still stung. In one month, Sun Bear had taught him things he should have learned years before. In one month, he helped lessen the sting of the injustices he suffered in prison. In one month, Sun Bear had taught him more than he had learned in his entire lifetime.

Tai Lung owed more than just his life to this man. This man, who was hundreds of times his age, whose life he knew was going to end soon...and by the gods, it was going to end on _his_ terms.

"Where is the closest tunnel?" he dejectedly asked First Brother.

"Right behind us, along this wall," the lion said, his eyes still trained on the lone bear. He gasped when he saw the soldiers storm through the gates at the old bear. Sun Bear was ready.

"Any way for us to help him?" Tai Lung asked.

First Brother's eyes glanced over at the rainwater barrels in the corner. That told the snow leopard that those barrels did not contain rainwater. "Overturn those barrels," the lion said. "This temple is the tinder, and those contain the accelerant."

"Open the tunnel and get the others inside," Tai Lung whispered, taking a lantern from a nearby monk. "I'll buy you all some time." Casting one glace at Po, he thought, _Just trust me_, and strode forward in a determined march right towards the dueling monk and soldiers.

A few soldiers broke rank and came straight at him. He grabbed one by the collar and the other by the arm; the first he threw over his shoulder and slammed into the stones, the other he swung into the nearest pillar. Three more came at him, spears at his throat. He blocked one high, the other one low, dodged the third and swung the soldier's feet from under him as he snapped the three spear shafts together in half. He kept moving forward, straight towards Sun Bear, who stood in the middle of a circle of soldiers, taking each one at a time. He wouldn't last long like this. He knew what the old man was doing and if this was his plan, it wouldn't work. These soldiers weren't going to stop until either he was dead...or they were.

Tai Lung stopped in the middle of the courtyard just as more soldiers charged at him. He set down the lantern, and lowered himself into his signature Leopard Style stance. The soldiers charging at him slowed, just a little; that alone probably saved their lives. He lowered himself into a battle stance and hissed at the soldiers,

"I'm giving you the same chance the Anvil of Heaven had: get out of my way, leave this temple now, and you will live. This is the only warning you're going to get."

None of them moved. He pleaded with his eyes, looking at each of their faces. _Get out...get yourselves out..._ Two of them brandished their weapons and advanced on him... "Fine; don't say I never warned you."

With a roar, he threw his first punch, tripped another and threw him down in a body slam that snapped the soldier's neck. He caught a spear that had been aimed at his heart and yanked it forward, viciously striking the soldier bearing it. Tai Lung snapped the spear over his knee and used the broken parts to keep two more soldiers at bay. Finding no easy way out of this, he growled and with a powerful lunge, grabbed the lantern he had dropped, flipped over the soldiers' heads and fought his way into the circle that Sun Bear was fighting in.

Tai Lung only barely dodged the flaming hand that swung out, striking down a rhino that had lunged towards the snow leopard. A drop-kick further slammed the rhino into the paving stones. Tai Lung looked to Sun Bear, who stared back at him. His breathing was far more labored than it should have been, and the old master looked tired and worn, despite the fire that blazed in his dark eyes.

"I told you to run, you fool!" the old bear said, throwing a volley of punches at one of his opponents.

"I said I wasn't leaving you until the end!" Tai Lung shouted, taking down two more soldiers as he spoke.

"Tai Lung, you idiot, this _is_ the end!" Sun Bear shouted back. "You think I was going to die an old man in my bed? The hell with that!" He took down three men simultaneously then moved in close to the snow leopard, hissing, "You're not getting another chance to do this: run. My time is over. Yours has just begun. I will not tell you again: Get Out."

Tai Lung paused, quickly asking as another foolish soldier came at him, "What about my promise to light your pyre?"

"What do you think that lantern is for?"

And suddenly Tai Lung understood. He wasn't happy with it, but he understood. He watched breathlessly as Sun Bear made a hole in the ring of soldiers for him to run through. Handing him the lantern, the old bear said, "Light my pyre," and was back to fighting to the last breath.

Tai Lung ran, dodging weapons that came his way, and he ran right for the barrels next to the pillars in the courtyard. He quickly tipped one over, spilling a vicuous substance upon the stones. Taking the candle out of the lantern, he took one last look over his shoulder at his mentor before letting the candle drop into the flammable fluid.

At the far end of the courtyard, First Brother and Po were waiting for him. Tai Lung looked over his shoulder back at Sun Bear, the original Phoenix Warrior, who was still holding his own against a score of soldiers. Master and Student locked eyes across the courtyard. Sun Bear sent only one word: _Go_.

Fighting down his emotions, Tai Lung fled in the direction of the escape tunnel, ushered along by Po and First Brother, who sealed the door shut behind them. As they ran they could hear a horrific roar from the surface, but neither of them dared to find out what it was. Tai Lung knew. The Phoenix and her Warrior had purified the temple in the only way they could.

* * *

It had taken them the better part of that night to reach the bottom. It was a gray dawn that met them when they finally emerged at the foot of the mountain. Even so far below, the air tasted acrid with smoke and soot. The Phoenix Temple burned as a pyre for the soldiers that had come for Tai Lung's life, and, of course, for Sun Bear, who had given his life to save his brethren. Po noticed that the monks were not immune to such distress. They had clearly planned for something like this, but in some ways they were never fully prepared for it.

Tai Lung had not prepared for it. He had known Sun Bear would die, of course, but the panda didn't think the snow leopard was emotionally ready for it. The snow leopard had been absolutely silent since they began their escape, and seemed alarmingly catatonic. He sat alone, hugging his own arms and staring into space. Po was at a complete loss for what to do. He had never lost anyone he was truly close to. He had no clue what to say to make it better, or to at least snap him out of it. The glassy look in his golden eyes was very unsettling.

Po meditated on it, or tried to. He couldn't focus, which he felt was a failure on his part, allowing such an event to unsettle him so. After much deliberation, he decided to let it be. Tai Lung would talk when he was ready. Instead, from across the camp, Po sent Tai Lung an internal message:

_I'm sorry, Tenzin. I don't know what to say. If you ever want to talk, you know you can trust me._

Whether or not Tai Lung got the message, he didn't know. He didn't hear anything back. Either way, it was now up to the snow leopard to continue the conversation. Instead, he barely spoke two syllables in as many days, when finally Po decided they had waited long enough. It was time to go home.

* * *

"We've given you enough rations to get to the largest village in Yunnan," First Brother explained, "But after that, you'll be on your own."

"This is more than we deserve. Thank you, First Brother," Po said, bowing deeply to the old lion.

Tai Lung was still staring into space, this time up at the top of the mountain. The fire had finally died down so that it was no longer visible, but instead the peak smoked like a volcano on the eve of eruption. Po knew that the purification by fire was a good thing, that even a forest destroyed by fire comes back just as gloriously as before, if not more so. Po and the new leader of the monks exchanged pleasantries, well-wishes, and honors.

"Go in peace, Dragon Warrior. We will chant prayers for you to ensure a safe return."

"You don't have to do that..."

First Brother gave him a stern look, "We must. Right now, without our prayers, we have nothing."

In the silence that followed, Tai Lung finally said something; absolutely downtrodden, he quietly stated, "This is my fault. They came here for me, none of you should have been harmed. Now you're homeless, your abbot is dead, and at the worst possible time..."

"You had no idea they were coming," First Brother said in comfort. "This was _not_ your fault, and we both know that."

Tai Lung looked back up at the peak. First Brother sighed and squeezed the snow leopard's shoulder. "We both know he would never have died in his bed. He died as he lived...kicking butt and taking names. If only we could all die as we have lived. He was lucky."

"Lucky?" Tai Lung snapped. "He's _dead_! How is that lucky?"

Po grabbed his other shoulder, and firmly called his name. "_Tenzin_, listen to me: Sun Bear was over a thousand years old. He knew his time was coming. I know it hurts to lose him. He wasn't even my master, and I'm sorry he's gone. But he did this for _you_. He died so we could escape and bring balance back to the world."

"Po, he died up there, and he was alone..." he shook his head miserably. "I left him up there to die alone. I swore that I would be there with him until the very end, and I broke that promise. How much is my word worth now?"

Po gave in and hugged him, sighing as Tai Lung wrapped his arms around him. "Tai Lung, he wasn't alone. He had the Phoenix, didn't he? And now, he's got Oogway. He's not alone, okay? And neither are you." Po released him from the hug and patted his shoulder. "We need to get going before it gets too dark." Po turned back to First Brother, "Thank you for everything. We won't forget any of you."

"Nor we, you," the lion replied. He gave Tai Lung a sad look, "We may be down, now, but we'll pick ourselves up, as we always do. Remember, even when we think Heaven is not there, Heaven carries us in our greatest times of need." Forgoing all propriety, First Brother gave Tai Lung a hug and whispered, "We will go into hiding, in case more of them come around. You make us proud, Phoenix Warrior, and you will do us proud. Good luck."

The warriors bowed to the new leonine abbot, picked up their rucksacks, and began the arduous journey home. Following Sun Bear's instructions, they avoided the Red Bird Pass, and considered taking the Bing Yuan Road home. But first, they had to stop for provisions in Yunnan's largest village, about twenty miles across the border in the Diqing prefecture.

The journey was mostly silent, no matter what Po tried. He attempted conversations about food, about jokes he'd heard the monks tell, or about the things that awaited them when they got home. The snow leopard never responded to many of them, except for the promise of seeing his wife and his father again.

By the end of the day, they had tracked all the way back to the border of China, and Po decided to make camp for the night. They had made great time-what had once taken them two days, now only took them one day; whether that meant the training had made them faster or stronger, the panda didn't know. It boded well for them, that perhaps the journey home wouldn't be as bad as he'd thought. But one look at Tai Lung made him sigh.

"Hungry?" Po asked, desperately looking for something to talk about. Tai Lung didn't say much besides a quick "I'm not hungry". Suddenly, Po got very, very mad, and he growled, "You've barely eaten anything in two days. If you don't eat something, right now, I'm shoving it down your throat. Don't make me do that."

The snow leopard paused, then sighed and said, "I suppose I could eat." Tai Lung dropped his bag, loosening the ties to reach inside. "All right…map…candles…flint and tinder…now where's the—"

A furry little hand shot up out of the bag and handed him a travel bar wrapped in a lotus leaf.

"Oh, thank you. Here's your—BOLLOCKS!" he shouted, jumping back a few feet in shock. Gripping at his rapidly beating heart, Tai Lung stared in shock back at his rucksack, which had suddenly grown a pair of tiny hands…and a set of two large furry ears.

"Little Brother!" Po gasped. "What are you doing here?"

The tiny red panda finally poked his head out of Tai Lung's rucksack, an impish smile on his round face and a travel bar in each hand by way of peace offerings. Tai Lung still clutched at his chest, muttering swears that he hoped the child could not hear. Little Brother waited for Po to take a travel bar and climbed out of the rucksack, taking the map with him. The child trotted up to Tai Lung, grinning, and pushed the other travel bar and the map in his face.

"Oh no, no, absolutely _not_," the snow leopard said. "No, Little Brother, you _cannot_ come with us!"

The child stuck out his bottom lip—

"Don't you even dare; I wrote the book on the 'pitifully cute face', I know all the tricks," the newly-minted Phoenix Warrior said. "This journey is _not_ for children. Now you are going to march right back to that mountain, young man, or so help me—"

"Tai, let it go," Po said tiredly. "It's too late for us to head back now, and we're almost to the border anyway."

"Po, I'm _not_ letting him come with us—it's too dangerous! And the monks have got to be worried sick by now, not knowing where he is."

"And if we go back now, we may never find where the monks went. They're supposed to be in hiding, remember?" Po pointed out. "Lets just let him come with us. We might find his home along the way. If we don't, well, we're going to the Valley anyway, right? That can be his home."

Tai Lung sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly feeling a headache coming on, though from frustration or the sudden change in altitude, he wasn't sure. "I don't want to bring him into any danger, Po."

"What danger?" Po asked. "He'd be in danger anyway if he stayed with the monks. There's risk everywhere, Tai, and no one is ever totally safe. Don't you think he'd be safer with us?"

"No, because we're both wanted men on _both _sides of the law!" he sighed again and looked down at the red panda, who was giving him a longing, sad look. Po watched him carefully. This marked the first time in days that Tai Lung had exhibited an emotion other than grief, and he probably knew it too. The Dragon Warrior watched his equal, knowing how his thought process was turning: He wasn't going to cave...no, he was Tai Lung, the Phoenix Warrior! And he was strong enough to not cave to a seven-year-old's pouty-face...

"Bugger. Fine. He can come."

* * *

Sorry about how depressing this was...Chapter 14 won't be much better. Sorry.

A couple notes here: "Use the brain Heaven gave you" is a nod to my mom who, throughout my childhood, begged me and the rest of the family to "use the brain God gave you". And yes, Po's analysis of deflection fighting is a paraphrasing of Newton's Law (I think it is, anyway): an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless met by an equal and opposite force. Oogway's advice to Po is also a paraphrasing of the famous "Serenity Prayer": "God, grant me the serenity/ To accept the things I cannot change/ Courage to change the things I can/ And wisdom to know the difference." This generally applies to various support groups like AA and NA, but IMHO, it can also apply to daily life.

Flame me if you desire (no pun intended), because I know a few of you liked Sun Bear. Please read and review, I'd like to know if I still got it after such a long break in updating.


	14. Chapter 14: Recollections

Disclaimer: I don't own KFP, that is the property of Dreamworks Animation Studios. I own the OCs, and the text of this story is my own intellectual property, so please don't use it without my permission. Thanks.

Another little update, sort of an early Christmas/Yule present for all you readers. Sure, I could've written something a little cheerier for the occasion, but I've been working on this particular chapter for a while now. I hope it answers some questions, and holds your interest until Chapter 15 is ready.

Happy Holidays to all, and a Happy New Year!

* * *

Chapter 14: Recollections

* * *

Tigress watched her husband worriedly as Su Lin administered healing herbs. Dalang had fallen into such a sudden fever it took everyone by surprise. The customers who had witnessed his collapse had stuck around only long enough to see that he was well, or at least being taken care of. Mr. Ping had quickly assured them, offering more noodles—at a steep discount—in order to distract them from the minor emergency.

Sonam looked like a wreck, having been the one to carry the tiger up the stairs. His worry, of course, stemmed from his seeing the young tiger as a second son. Tigress probably looked paler than either of them, she wagered. Mei Xing and Auntie Wu stood at the door, also anticipating what Su Lin's diagnosis would be. The female panda was currently checking the tiger's vital signs while he was resting. His eyes were cracked open, his pale lips slightly parted, and a raspy sound rattled in his throat. Tigress didn't like it at all; he looked pale as death.

"What's wrong with him?" she finally asked Su Lin. The panda looked up at her and pressed her thumb against Dalang's wrist to check his pulse, then said, "I don't know exactly. My best guess is exhaustion."

"Exhaustion doesn't cause a fever," Mei Xing said.

"It can—overworking would make him too weak to fend off illness. But it'll be okay," Su Lin smiled hopefully. "Its probably some kind of bug he picked up. The herbs I've given him should break the fever, in a couple days or so. He just needs a lot of fluids, and lots of rest, and he should be fine. There aren't any other symptoms to suggest its anything more serious."

"It was too sudden," Sonam said, shaking his head. "I don't like it. Are you sure nothing else is wrong, love?"

Su Lin shrugged, packing up her bag. "I'll stick around to watch over him, to see if anything else develops. So far all I see is a cough and the fever. He may just have a really bad cold, so there shouldn't be much else wrong." The panda looked directly at Tigress. "He'll be fine. He's survived worse. But just to be safe, you'll want to keep little Shang away from him for a while."

"He can sleep in my room," Mei Xing offered. "It's on the other side of the house, he'll be safer there." The snow leopardess sent Tigress a sympathetic look. "I know its going to be hard, but if Po's vision is true, you all need to be ready when this threat arrives."

"I know," she sullenly agreed, sending her husband a desperate look. "I just don't want to leave him like this."

Auntie Wu patted her hand. "He's in good hands, dear. We'll keep watch, and send word if anything develops. Who knows, his fever may break before the night is out."

She sighed. "I hope you're right…"

Monkey appeared at the top of the stairs, with Mantis perched on his shoulder, and hailed her. "We came as soon as we heard. How is he?"

"He's recovering," Tigress said over her shoulder. "But it's too soon to tell."

The simian moved over to Tigress, searching her face. "How are _you_ doing?"

Tigress didn't answer.

"You know," Mantis started, jumping up to her shoulder. "If you need to stay here, we understand…"

"No," she said with conviction. "No, I need to continue my training. I don't like leaving him like this; he's more vulnerable this way. But if this…creature suddenly arrives, I need to be in top shape to fight him. We all do."

"But…" Monkey said, but stopped himself just in time. As much as he hated to admit it, she had a very good point. Besides, it was _her_ idea to get the team back together, after all. And it did no good to remind her of her family obligations when she was likely beating herself up over it already.

"Okay," Mantis said slowly after sharing a knowing look with his simian friend. "But only if you're _sure_."

"I'm sure," she said, smiling at Auntie Wu and Su Lin. "Ms. Lien has a point—he is in the best hands I know." Slowly, she crossed the room and knelt by the bed, taking Dalang's bandaged hand in hers. He opened his eyes a little more and weakly smiled.

"Hey, Sunshine," he greeted, his voice as raspy as if he had screamed it raw.

"Hi, honey," she smiled hopefully, smoothing back the fur on his head; his forehead was perspiring and his face was flushed with fever. "How are you feeling?"

"Like hell."

She chuckled, happy to see he was well enough to have a sense of humor.

"That's what I like to see," he said softly. "I'll be okay…be fit as a…as a…what's the word…?"

"Feeling a little loopy?" Tigress asked.

"I don't think Sonam's spots are supposed to be pink…" he said, squinting at the snow leopard.

"What did you _give_ him?" Sonam whispered to the female panda.

"I think that's the fever, dear," Wu said as she hoisted herself up onto the bed. She felt the tiger's forehead and drew back. "Well, you're burning up, alright. Don't make me repeat what I did to you in the Kunlun Mountains, young man, because I'll do it."

"He got sick there," Su Lin explained at Tigress's expression. "And instead of resting, he tried to work it off and made a few people sick. Auntie nearly tanned his hide for that."

"I learned my lesson," he groaned. "I'll just…stay right here, I guess."

"Will you be okay?" Tigress asked.

He smiled at her, gripping her hand. "I'm a little nauseous, throat hurts, I'm kinda dizzy, and really tired, but I'll be okay. Go train; its okay, your friends need you."

"You're my husband; _you_ need me."

"C'mon, you're _Master Tigress_," he reminded her. "You're a better protector person…thing…than…whoa. Colors..."

"What colors?"

He weakly raised his hand to point at some empty space next to her head. "C'mon, they're right there…little spots…big spots…like fireflies, kinda pretty…"

Whatever Su Lin had given him was producing some particularly worrisome side-effects. Tigress only forced a smile and patted his hand. "Okay. I'll let you rest, and I'll come back at dinner to check on you."

"A'kay," he slurred, quickly drifting off into a fever- and medicine-induced sleep. Tigress stood, kissed his forehead as he nodded off, and turned to leave. But first, she gave an inquisitive look to Su Lin.

"Seriously, what did you _give_ him?"

* * *

Dalang's eyes cracked open, scanning the room. His blurry vision settled on Su Lin and Sonam, both of whom were playing a game of Mahjong as they kept vigil by a single candle. It must have been very late that night, as it was quite dark outside, and the light of even that single candle hurt his eyes when contrasted against the darkness. He closed them again, wondering why it felt like he'd only been asleep for mere minutes when it had really been hours.

He had a vague recollection that Tigress had been there at some point…but she'd been wearing a strange looking hat, and gloves that looked like elephant hands…at least he thought they were gloves. He'd thought it odd that Sonam had decided to dye his fur purple with pink spots, and that Su Lin wore a dress made out of rainbows. Then again, he'd never thought Aunt Wu could look so good, and that he would actually be jealous of Shifu…

_Wow, I must be __**really**_ _sick_.

But what he truly wasn't prepared for was how exposed this sickness made him. He had gotten fevers before, and each time it happened within the past decade, he remembered having the most explicit nightmares and jarring, useless sleeps in his life. He was also prone to violent reactions to those visions.

No wonder Sonam was there; Su Lin probably did that intentionally. She'd treated his fevers enough times—three now, to be exact—that she knew what to expect. He'd scared the hell out of her the first time, something he'd always hate himself for. He and his family had already done enough damage to her.

Now he was laid low again, vulnerable, completely inept, and there was nothing he could do to distract from the memories that he tried so hard to suppress.

Dalang sighed and looked out into space as the first of many memories resurfaced… He thought miserably, _How much am I willing to tell Tigress_? Very little, he decided. He was trying to forget just as she was trying to find out more about him. Maybe he should indulge her curiosity, come clean about everything he had been hiding, but he feared the damning evidence against him, and moreover, feared her reaction to the facts.

For example—the key example—was the fact that Shen had very little to do with his formative years. Not even Shang was the real teacher and protector of the young tiger, not completely.

No, the one Dalang was closest to in the horde was Asmodei Koshchei.

"_Dalang! Malchik!" Koshchei whirled into the mess tent, throwing his arms wide with a welcoming smile. "Vhy you in stuffy old tent? Young man like you should be outside; vhy you here?"_

_Sixteen-year-old Dalang looked over his shoulder at the affable leopard. "Just workin' on a new recipe, Asmodei. Spinach wontons."_

_The leopard made a disgusted noise. "Blech! Spinach! No vonder is that stench…"_

_The teenager laughed, grinning innocently. "C'mon Asmodei, you're the one who told me I should be a cook—and you know you got a point…I'm not such a great fighter, so maybe Dad will let me leave, go to school somewhere?"_

"_To vhat, be chef?" the leopard scoffed. "He never let you. Jiao Shen is fool—not care since Mama die, yes?" the assassin frowned when Dalang fell silent; he sighed and patted the teenager's shoulder. "She vas good voman; she vould be proud, seeing you here. You are becoming very good, very strong young man, handsome too! Beat off girls vit bricks!"_

"_Sticks," Dalang corrected._

"_Vhateva, is vhat I say," the leopard shrugged._

_Dalang smiled and pulled the wontons from the sizzling vegetable oil and left them to dry. He picked one up with a pair of chopsticks and popped it into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. "Mm! Asmodei, you gotta try this!"_

_He waved it off. "No t'anks; haff to tie down and force feed me."_

"_Aw c'mon!" he chided. "You can't even taste it. This is a lot like those real hearty foods you introduced me to in Tunguska, remember?"_

"_Ah, Tunguska," the leopard smiled fondly. "Vas much fun that summer…you vould go back, sometime?"_

"_You mean…with you?"_

_Koshchei didn't say anything, only offering the boy a welcoming smile. Dalang, desperate for any form of warm paternal attention, smiled back, albeit bashfully. "You'd…you'd really want me to come with you?"_

"_Of course! Dalang, you are like son, yes? As close to son as I get. Boys like you need good role model."_

_Dalang shyly smiled, visibly thinking it over. "Y'know…I'd like that. Can we go back to that lake we went to last time?"_

"_Of course! Is not trip to Tunguska vit-out fishing, eh?" he chuckled, with charming smile and warm countenance, playfully punching the boy in the shoulder. Teenage Dalang had fallen in with the leopard many years before, after his mother had died. He never knew why she didn't want Koshchei anywhere near her youngest son; what was the problem, when Asmodei was so kind, so warm, so accommodating? The Amur leopard was nicer to him than most of his brothers were, and certainly nicer than Shen was. Asmodei provided that father figure Dalang craved and so desperately needed, with all the bonding fathers and sons were supposed to have…_

_Well, except for "the Talk"; Shang had beaten the leopard on that one._

_Dalang noticed Koshchei eyeing the rack of cooling fried wontons. The tiger smirked, waiting for it…_

"_Ach, hell's teeth," the leopard swore, "Vill try __**one**__."_

_Dalang watched as the leopard extracted a long black claw and pierced a wonton with it, popping the small pocket of palatability into his mouth. The leopard chewed thoughtfully a moment, and Dalang realized with a grin that while the leopard wanted to and expected to hate it, it was undeniable that he was enjoying himself._

_The leopard finally swallowed and glared at the tiger. "Damn you, boy. Damn you! Only person eva make spinach I vill eat."_

"_You like it?" he asked, desperately reaching for any kind of praise._

"_Better make more—be gone before others eat," the leopard teased, popping another into his mouth. "You haff talent, Dalang. Talent vill take you far. Should cook for Tsar! Or, eh, vhat is Han king name?"_

"_The Emperor?"_

"_Da—best food I eva haff. But you make egg-cellent fish too. You know, let's go tonight, to Tunguska. Shen not miss us."_

_Dalang looked uncertain. "He'd be real mad if we just left without saying anything…"_

"_You let me vorry about Old Cat," Koshchei smiled. "Go, go pack, ve leave after dinner."_

"_Where are you going?"_

_Dalang swallowed hard as he looked to the tent's entrance. Jiao Shang stood there, giving the Amur leopard an indescribable expression. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, and his voice was surprisingly cool and calm, given his stony appearance. "So where is it, Asmodei? Where are you going?"_

_Koshchei, amazingly, was unfazed by the dark look the Amur tiger was giving him. "Thought take Dalang back to Tunguska; you like it there, no?"_

_Shang cut off Dalang's answer, "Whether he likes it or not doesn't matter, does it, Koshchei? Shen's not letting him go, and neither am I."_

"_Shang," Dalang begged. "C'mon, its just one little trip…"_

_Shang flicked his eyes over to his brother, then glared back at the leopard. The pair of warriors stared each other down, their bodies tense and still. Shang finally said, "You want to go on a trip?"_

_Dalang nodded excitedly. "Yeah! It's so boring here in the camp; I wanna go on adventures like the rest of you!"_

_He never expected Shang to actually say it. "Okay. Pack your rucksack, we're going on an overnight," the twenty-six-year-old told his younger brother._

_Asmodei did not look pleased. "I proposition him first, Jiao Shang."_

"_That's what bothers me, Koshchei," Shang glared. "Dalang, get your bag."_

"_But, what about the wontons…" the boy asked._

_Shang put a heavy hand on his brother's thin shoulder, squeezing it until it began to hurt. "Get your bag. I've got money, I'll buy you dinner. Let's go. Now." Noting Dalang's hurt look, the eldest Jiao brother warmly smiled, his grip on his shoulder easing up. "We don't want to wait too long, or it'll get dark before we get to town."_

_At the time, Dalang didn't bother to ask, so excited to finally be having some excitement in his life! And to go to a town, someplace Shen had expressly forbid him to go, and now Shang, his favorite brother, was taking him there! He decided it was best not to question if Shang actually had Shen's permission; instead, grinning, the bright-eyed youth exclaimed, "Sure, I'll be right back!"_

"_Actually, I'll come with you. I need to grab a couple things myself…" the elder brother said, turning to follow him, carefully shielding the boy's back from the leopard's piercing eyes._

_Dalang turned back to give Koshchei an apologetic look. "Maybe in the summer again, like last year? If you told Dad it was for training, maybe he'd let us go."_

_Koshchei smiled, a strange light in his eyes. "Is good idea. I look forward to it."_

"_And maybe Shang can come too," Dalang asked hopefully, looking upon his brother with pure hero-worship. Shang only grabbed the boy's upper arm, dragging him along and curtly replying, "We'll see."_

At the time, he couldn't place the look in the leopard's eyes. Now that over a decade had passed, now that he was older and wiser, Dalang knew exactly what that look had been. The look he'd sent to Shang was purely murderous…but the look he'd sent to Dalang was even more grotesque and disturbing. And now that Dalang thought it over, those smiles had always had a hidden meaning, a meaning he only divulged after years of recollection and hindsight.

Now that he knew, he was even more grateful for Shang for taking him into town that night. Granted, being given a room with a very nubile lady of the night was enough to cement Dalang's loyalty forever, but hindsight revealed Shang's truer intentions: to keep his youngest brother as far away from the Amur leopard as possible.

Another memory resurfaced, one that brought tears to his eyes every time: his mother's funeral. He remembered very little of her and what he did remember he grasped at with such desperation it was depressing, like trying to hold onto a handful of smoke. It was traumatic, he knew, and he couldn't stop crying. None of his brothers could. Even Shen, someone supposed to be as impenetrable and solid as a mountain, had tear stains matting the fur on his cheeks. That was the only time Dalang ever saw his father exhibit an emotion other than rage or apathy. The cremation was the worst part.

Dalang had been old enough at the time to know that Ming Hua's body should have been buried, but it was the custom of the Jiao to carry their loved ones wherever they went. He later learned that Shen had planned—perhaps hoped?—to return to the ruins of the Lotus School to bury her ashes there…but they never went anywhere near there. Now that he thought about it, perhaps Shen truly did love her…perhaps he loved her too much to let any trace of her go. So he selfishly held on, denying her the peace she deserved…

_He was traumatized, six years old, young, helpless, feeling like a lost, lonely child without a home. He never expected any compassion from Shen, who afterwards would retire to his tent and refuse to accept any company. And Dalang's six older brothers were too anguished to offer any comfort to him._

_So he cried alone. His little body shook with his sobs, crying so hard it hurt to breathe. His brothers did nothing to comfort him; even Shang stared out into space, his green eyes glazed over with unshed tears as the flames reached high into the sky. Dalang knew that Shang could hear him, and at the time he resented him for not being there to wipe his tears away like he'd done so many times before. It would be many years before Dalang understood how debilitating grief could be._

_But at the time, he was a scared and forlorn child, angry at the gods for taking his mother away, and angry that the gods cursed him with a family who didn't care about him. When he needed them most, they had abandoned him; such was his childish philosophy._

_He suddenly became aware of someone standing next to him, but he didn't look up. He'd learned early that looking directly at an adult was rude, and he'd been slapped for it before—never in front of his mother, though; she wouldn't tolerate anyone touching her baby. The figure knelt next to him, bringing himself down to the child's level and looked him in the eye. Dalang finally looked up into sympathetic blue-green eyes and a broad spotted face. He recognized the leopard as one of Shen's best fighters, and usually the spotted cat looked so mean it made the cub afraid._

_But now, the Amur leopard was looking at him sadly, pityingly, and after a slight pause, he opened up his arms to the cub. Desperate for the attention and affection he had only previously gotten from his mother, Dalang instinctively fell into the hug, crying on the leopard's shoulder while the adult patted his back and whispered soothing words in Russian. Dalang didn't care that he couldn't understand the words, the meaning was clear. This man, this creature, this stranger, was here offering him the one thing he needed most._

_The cub sniffled, wiping his nose with the back of his paw. The leopard handed him a piece of cloth, a rudimentary handkerchief, and said in a thick, deep accent, "I lose mama too. Vas much young, like you. Never forget; take big heart, remember her alvays, get easier, da?"_

_Dalang only sniffed and nodded, hugging the leopard back as he cried._

_Looking back on it now, Dalang should have realized that was when it all started. Now he knew why Shang looked angry, why the Twins, Feng, Huang, and even Xiang looked at the leopard worriedly. In a rare moment of protectiveness, Feng made a move to snatch his little brother away from the Amur leopard, but was held back by Huang, who only shook his head in a warning way._

_But Shang didn't seem to care, given the way he glared at the leopard, his green eyes narrowed dangerously. Six-year-old Dalang was bitter enough to think 'serves you right, __**you**_ _should be the one hugging me, telling me everything will be okay!' What a little idiot he'd been. Now, he knew the leopard's real reason for bringing him under his wing_…

A face suddenly loomed into view. Su Lin's warm brown eyes were peering into his as she checked his vital signs. Sonam asked her something, something Dalang couldn't understand. It sounded so far away. Was his hearing failing him? Or was he so far away in his past that he could barely hold on to the present?

Sonam suddenly appeared, gently squeezing his shoulder. "C'mon, lad, I know you can fight this. You've had worse…"

"_You haff vorse," Koshchei said to the crying child. "Vhat is tears? You big boy, yes? Dry eyes, is not bad. See? Is eh, how you say…a scratch?"_

_Seven-year-old Dalang sniffed and tried to dry his eyes with his sleeve. He sat on the ground, Asmodei Koshchei kneeling in front of him. The Amur leopard carefully pulled the torn fabric away from the skinned knee and clucked his tongue._

"_All these tears for little scrape. Vhat Shen do vit you?"_

"_It…it really hurts," Dalang sniffed._

"_Ach, is not'ink," the leopard scoffed. "Vhen I your age, I fall on pitchfork! See, am fine naow!"_

"_Wouldn't that kill you?" the cub skeptically asked._

"_Not a scratch!" the leopard chuckled. "Remember alvays this saying: Vhat doesn't kill you, make you stronger. Naow, this little scratch kill you?"_

_Dalang sniffled, wiped his nose with his sleeve, then shook his head._

_Koshchei smiled and chuckled, chucking the cub's chin. "Vell naow, you stronger, yes?"_

_A smile slowly tugged on the cub's lips as the leopard carefully washed and bandaged the minor wound. When he was done, he patted the knee and helped the boy up. "There naow, no more tears? Good, is good time to teach…"_

"_Teach me what?" Dalang asked. His knee still hurt, but if Asmodei was going to give him one more of his lessons, so much the better. The leopard had such interesting stories! Stories about his travels along the Silk Road, the places he'd seen, the different creatures he'd witnessed. He told of Buddhas carved right out the sides of mountains, taller than the tallest pagoda, of deserts so dry that spit would sizzle and dry up before it hit the ground, and snowy wastelands so desolate that no life would venture there. He told the boy he had even see a monster called a gryphon, and a one-horned creature called a unicorn, but Dalang was skeptical of that. He grew even more skeptical of stories about animals like gazelles, that had necks as long as twelve feet or more, with horns like a dragon and mottled red and white coats like a strange kind of leopard, and long black tongues that stuck out for twelve inches! 'Even __**I**_ _know that's not real,' he thought._

_But Asmodei was so kind to him, and always willing to indulge his curiosity. The leopard pointed to the knife in the boy's belt. "You get that vhen you have five years, yes? I teach you to use it. I teach you knife fighting."_

"_But Huang already promised to teach me some of that," the cub protested._

"_Nyet," the leopard said, shaking his head. "He not good enough. Here, I teach best methods…" He dropped into a low stance and beckoned the boy forward. "Come, naow, try stab me. Come, show old Asmodei vhat you can do…"_

"…Can you sit up? Come on, Dalang, I know you can."

Dalang blearily opened his eyes and saw Sonam's one-eyed gaze. The snow leopard looked particularly worried. "Do you need help?" he asked again.

Dalang had to think about how to answer that. He knew he lacked the strength to do it on his own, but to admit that he needed help…

"_If you needed help learning to fight, you should've said something," Shang scolded as he wrapped his brother's arm. Reaching for a sling, he carefully lifted Dalang's bandaged arm. "You know Xiang and I would have taught you those same things…and you wouldn't have gotten hurt…" he added, sending a glare in the Amur leopard's direction._

_Koshchei just shrugged, idly smoking his pipe. "Boy is not dead, Jiao Shang; consider victory."_

"_Its okay," young Dalang assured his brother. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, right?"_

"_I'd feel better about that if you weren't trying to kill yourself," the older tiger muttered._

_Before Dalang could protest, Koshchei did for him. "Is harmless, Jiao Shang."_

"_**Harmless**__? You broke his arm!" the oldest Jiao snapped._

"_Vhat, he is fine naow!"_

_The tent flaps suddenly flew open and much to the surprise of the other felines, Jiao Shen stormed into the medical unit. The patriarch made straight for the Amur leopard and brutally backhanded him. Koshchei's head whipped to the side, but the leopard didn't flinch; instead, he slowly turned his head back to face the enraged Manchurian tiger, a smug look on his otherwise vacant face._

"_You…" Shen seethed. "If you __**ever**_ _do something like this to one of my sons again, I will destroy you, do I make myself clear?"_

_Koshchei glared back, then a slow, cruel smile spread across his face. "Of course, lustrous leader…"_

"_**Illustrious**__," Shen corrected through clenched teeth._

_The leopard shrugged. "Is vhat I say."_

"_I do not appreciate you lying to me," he continued. "I will not tolerate it."_

_Koshchei started laughing._

"_I fail to see what is so amusing."_

"_It amuse," the leopard chuckled, "because your generals lie every day. They too afraid to tell truth."_

"_At the very least they have some self-control."_

"_Self-control, bah! Is eh, how you say…overrated?"_

"_Father," Shang spoke up, in a tone that carried multiple meanings. Shen glanced at his two sons, then back at the leopard._

"_Get out," he ordered. "If you truly want to make yourself useful, Asmodei," Shen spit out his name, "then go take care of some of my more troublesome rivals."_

"_Ho, ho! __**Naow**_ _you give vork!" the leopard mocked. "Vell, if pay is good…"_

"_The pay is more than handsome, you know that," Shen growled. "Now get out."_

_Dalang watched fearfully as Koshchei stalked out, leaving him alone with his oldest brother and his fearsome father. Dalang never liked Shen, and he had the sneaking suspicion that the feeling was mutual. Shen terrified the boy, and the look he suddenly sent his two sons chilled the cub to the core._

_Then, to the child's astonishment, Shen actually knelt before him, just as Shang was doing, and checked the bandages on the boy's arm._

"_You made them too tight," he admonished._

"_They __**need**_ _to be tight in order for the bone to set," Shang argued. "Koshchei did a number on him."_

"_Yes, and his lack of remorse is…rather troubling, to be sure."_

"_Conceited prick…"_

"_Shang, language," Shen said sharply, "I will not have you thus corrupting your brother while he is still so young." Dalang dared to look up into his father's face as the patriarch inspected the broken arm. "Narcissism aside, Koshchei is a good warrior, truly a prize any general could wish for."_

"_Father, Koshchei is __**psychotic**__," Shang reminded. "Mom hated him, and you could always trust her judgment."_

_Dalang searched his father's face, and saw a look grace it that he couldn't identify until many years later: regret. But Shen quickly rebounded, locking gazes with his youngest. "Can you move it much? Can you move it at all?"_

_The cub shook his head._

"_No, I don't suppose you can. Am I to assume this is your dominant arm? I thought so. Very well, if you need help, I'm sure Shang will oblige you…"_

"…Dalang," Sonam said more firmly. "Do you need help sitting up?"

Dalang thought back to that last memory, hating the feeling of vulnerability, the same feeling he got when he had broken his arm, and Shang had to do everything for him. Koshchei never apologized for hurting him, but Shang…everything he did, from feeding him, helping him to bathe, to dress, doing everything to make it easier for his healing arm…all of that proved that his brother still loved him.

And now, Dalang realized, that perhaps that vulnerability, something that Koshchei would take advantage of…was how he knew who his real friends were.

Dalang finally nodded, tears brimming in his eyes. Sonam's strong arm wrapped around his shoulders and hoisted him up. "C'mon now, son, no need for that. There's no shame in this."

"I hate being helpless…" he murmurred.

"But you're not," Su Lin said softly. "Not when you've got us around. Mei made some soup; you need to eat."

"You're gonna spoon feed me?"

"We could always let you sip it through a straw," Sonam joked.

Dalang finally cracked a smile at that. "I 'unno how much I can stomach…"

"Just take your time," Su Lin said. "We'll be here."

He sat there, propped up against the old snow leopard's shoulder as Su Lin began feeding him little spoonfuls of broth and vegetables. He stared into space a moment, then asked, "Is Tigress back?"

"She's been back a few hours, lad," Sonam said. "You want to see her?"

"Yeah…" he nodded heavily. "Yeah…there's some stuff I gotta tell her…gotta tell her right now…"

* * *

Tigress took her seat next to her husband, gripping his hand as he stared up at the ceiling. She had no idea what he was planning, but whatever it was, she knew this was important to him. Somehow, she knew he was going to tell her everything she wanted to know. She had been worried, unable to focus on her training because of her fear for his health. Having Su Lin tell her that even _she_ had been worried didn't ease her nerves.

Dalang finally turned his head to look at her and sighed. "I'm sorry," he said.

"For what? You can't help being sick," she pointed out.

"No, I mean for not being honest."

She paused. "So is that what this is about?" she asked, hoping it sounded as gentle as she intended.

"You were right," he said weakly. "I've been keeping things from you. Truth is, I was trying to forget, and I didn't want you knowing because…" he paused and sighed heavily. "I knew telling you I was a Jiao would make you think differently of me, and Tigress, you're the best thing that's ever happened to me, and I don't want to lose you. I never wanted to lose you. But…I realize how selfish I was to do that, and how selfish I am to keep things like this from you."

She kept silent, silently nodding to encourage him. He wouldn't meet her eyes. "I'm ashamed to admit this," he started, "But Shang wasn't the one who taught me to fight."

"Okay," she nodded.

"He wasn't the one I depended on all the time."

"Okay…"

She recognized the look in his eyes. It was shame. Shame, heartbreak, regret, and pure coldblooded fear. He gripped her hand harder. "Please promise me that, once I tell you, you won't kill me, or leave me—"

"_Dalang_," she said firmly. "You are my _husband_. I love you. When we got married, I told you I would never leave you. No matter how horrible it could be, I won't leave you. I'm here," she repeated, gently grasping his hand back. "I always will be."

Dalang looked back at her, then averted his eyes again. "Remember I mentioned that a Siberian taught me how to speak Russian? This was the same guy. He…he was the only one to comfort me when Mom died, and I think that's how he got my trust. I knew him for eleven years before I realized what a monster he was." He swallowed hard and whispered, "His name was Asmodei Koshchei."

Dalang felt the stillness in the room, and the uncomfortable silence that followed, and the sudden stiffness of his wife's back. Tigress was looking at him with an unreadable expression, blank, the perfect poker face. Despite the uncomfortable feeling, he continued, "He was an assassin, an Amur leopard, and I think Shen trusted him at some time. Mom hated him; she never let any of us near him while she was alive. I know Shang knew about him, but he never told me. After I found out, he said he thought I knew a long time ago."

He mournfully shook his head. "Koshchei taught me how to fight. He taught me how to use a knife in battle, how to use a short sword; he taught me that I should show no mercy, because the enemy wouldn't give me mercy. He was good. He was very good at what he did. I know Shen called him away on missions a lot; sometimes he'd stick close to the camp to 'take care of something' as he put it. I found out when I was thirteen that Shen used him to torture people."

He glanced up at her face. She hadn't moved, hadn't made a sound. She only nodded her silent encouragement to continue.

"I started piecing things together after a while. Sometimes I'd hear screams at night, when the camp was still, and in the morning, he'd be at the nearest stream, trying to get bloodstains out of his clothes. I knew he was an assassin; I just thought he'd been out on a job that night. I didn't care what he did; it was just something I was used to. All my brothers were killers. I accepted that. Everyone in my family had had their first kill by the time they were twenty, and both Shen and Koshchei were training me for that moment. Shen was twisted, but Koshchei was worse. When I was thirteen, Shang started spending more time with me, taking me away from home for days at a time. I expected Shen to be angry, because I wasn't training, but he never said anything about it. I didn't find out why until I was seventeen, about a week before I ran away.

"See, Koshchei came to me that day, and told me he needed some help with something. Not training or anything like that. He said he had a box, full of money and treasure and stuff, things he said he'd stolen from his last job. He told me that the relatives of the guy he'd killed would be looking for it, and he needed to bury it somewhere for safe-keeping. So I followed him, out into the middle of the forest, far from the camp…too far. You know how you get that feeling, sometimes? That feeling that tells you something's really, really wrong, and tells you to get the hell out of there?"

She nodded. He sighed and closed his eyes, "I should've listened to it. I'm such an idiot… He brought me into this clearing, where the box was. It was a big, long wooden box, like a sailor's sea chest or something. I helped him drag it out of the bushes, and it was really heavy. We started digging a really deep hole. Koshchei didn't say why it had to be so deep. When we were done, I helped him toss the box in the hole, and we started to bury it and…"

He swallowed, and Tigress noticed his hand was shaking in her grip, and a cold sweat had broken out over his body, beads of perspiration dripping down his pale face. "I heard something banging, knocking at the lid…"

Her eyes widened with horror.

"…it got louder and louder, and I asked him what it was. He didn't tell me; he just said to keep shoveling dirt over it. Then I heard someone screaming." He looked so pale, and looked like he would be violently ill. He swallowed down the bile and finished, "I…I remember looking at him, shouting that someone was in there, and we had to get him out. The guy was pounding at the box, begging, pleading to be let out, screaming 'let me out. Let me out. I'll do anything, just let me out.'… Koshchei just told me to keep shoveling, or I'd be in there with him…so I ran."

He was crying now, inhaling deeply, finally confessing, "I ran to Shang, told him what happened. Shen overheard me, told me that was what Koshchei did, that…that was what he was paid to do. Shang thought I knew that. They both did. They thought…gods in heaven…they thought I was going down the same path…" he said, swallowing down a sob.

Tigress's hard gaze softened when she saw him break down in front of her, and suddenly she understood. No wonder he tried to block it out. Being buried alive…taking part in burying someone alive, even accidentally…she couldn't imagine being there. She couldn't imagine what he had been feeling. And how he was feeling now, that he came so close to following his in mentor's monstrous footprints…

He shook his head. "I think…I think Shen might've actually been _relieved_, you know? Like…it was bad enough one son was so unhinged, the fact I was 'normal' enough to be horrified by that…" he trailed off, then looked back at her. "Xiang wasn't always the way he was when you knew him. He used to be as nice as Shang, sometimes gave me little trinkets he'd picked off of his enemies, mostly insignia rings and money; he gave me candy whenever Shen wasn't looking, and the _ang pau_ from him were…pretty damn generous. I don't think he loved me as much as Shang did, but I guess he still cared about me, because I was the baby. But something happened when I was twelve, and he…it was like he changed overnight. He looked over his shoulder a lot. He started drinking, at first, then opium, lots of it. He got violent whenever he didn't get it. I dunno if Shen was worried about it, I think he was more concerned that he had another warrior, like Shang… But Shang told me later that Xiang had…he'd gotten on Koshchei's bad side, insulted him, and Koshchei got back at him one night. He was never the same again."

Tigress finally found her voice. "You mean he was tortured?"

Dalang nodded. "Had to be. There were never any marks. But Koshchei was good at that, too. He liked that, messing with people's heads." He fell silent, taking deep breaths to keep from losing complete control. "Promise me something…please…"

"What is it?" she asked, gripping his hand.

"When I die—if I die before you…"

She shook her head, startled by the sudden morbid turn, "Dalang, don't. I don't want you thinking—"

"Let me finish!" he snapped. "If I die before you, please, _please_, promise me you won't bury me for three days. Make sure that I'm really dead." He took a deep breath and shuddered, "I don't want to be that guy in the box…for the gods' sake, don't let me be the guy in that box…"

Tigress wrapped her arms around him, soothing him, rubbing his arm tenderly. She kissed his cheek, doing her best to comfort him, to calm him, even while her rage was steadily rising. "I won't let that happen to you," she promised. "I swear on my mother's soul, I won't let that happen. Shh…you're safe. Its okay, Dalang, _bao-bao_, you're safe, I'm here…I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere…"

It took a while for him to calm down, and when he had finally stopped shaking, she kissed his forehead, finding it still sweaty, but from fever or fear, she didn't know. "I'm going to go downstairs and get you some chamomile tea, to calm you down," she said. "Then I'll stay up here until you fall asleep…"

"You don't need to…"

She turned his head so that he was looking right at her. "I want to. Besides, I'm your wife. We're supposed to be there for each other when we're sick; you're sick, and I need to be here with you." She kissed his forehead again and got up. "I'll be right back."

One cup of tea later and another dose of Su Lin's medicine finally found the male tiger lying back and finally getting a good night's sleep. Tigress stayed true to her word, sitting by his side and watching over him until he fell into a deep, mercifully dreamless slumber. Then she stood, blew out the candle on the nightstand and left the room, closing the door behind her.

In the main room of the house, Su Lin, Sonam and Shifu were all there, and Mei Xing and Wu Lien were playing with Baby Shang. Tigress walked straight over to Sonam and Shifu, grabbed them both by the arm and started dragging them down the stairs to the kitchen.

"I need to talk to you, to both of you, right now," she said firmly.

"What, now?" Sonam asked.

"Yup, right now, let's go."

"Tigress, what is the meaning of this?" Shifu demanded.

"I'll tell you when we're out of earshot," she said. "I have a feeling that when I tell you this, you won't be happy…"

* * *

"_WHAT_?"

Tigress winced, the yell echoing off the kitchen's walls, yet she was impressed that a red panda could match a snow leopard in a fearsome roar. As soon as Dalang had said that creature's name, she knew telling Shifu was absolutely necessary. The Amur leopard's name was notorious, even amongst the assassins she and the Furious Five had fought. Even Shifu knew his name, and for the longest time believed the leopard's existence to be a myth, a rumor. Surely no mortal creature could be so demonically cruel. But now that the bogeyman was made flesh…the red panda looked as nervous as she felt.

"So he _is_ real," Shifu said breathlessly, shaking his head. "Unbelievable…"

"I surprised _you_ didn't know," she said pointedly to Sonam.

The one-eyed snow leopard glared. "I know who you're talking about, but I didn't know who he was at the time. Hell's teeth, woman, _had_ I known what he really was, I might've put killing _him_ as a higher priority than killing Shen!"

"So you had no idea that Dalang was running around with that monster?" she accused.

"What part of 'I didn't bloody know' don't you understand? He didn't become truly notorious until _after_ he left the horde!" the old snow leopard snapped.

"How could you _not_ know? You spied on that family for years!"

"Because I was keeping my peepers on Shen most of the time, lovely," he mocked. "His sons didn't concern me as much as he did. None of his men concerned me, I didn't give a damn. I just thought if I cut the head off, the rest of the body would die with it, if you'll pardon the term. That 'army' would splinter off and scatter as soon as that old cat was dead."

"But how no one knew he was with the Jiao…" Shifu said, running over the possibilities in his head. "It doesn't seem possible; we should have known that. We pay attention to what bandits and assassins say—that's how we know about our enemies before we go off to fight them."

"I know that, Master," Tigress replied. "But now that we know, can we really blame Dalang for keeping something like this a secret?"

The older men looked like they wanted to retort with an exuberant 'yes', that in fact, something as damning as this should have been one of the first things her husband should have come clean about. But then they each thought about it, shared a look, then both remembered that they too had done things in their lives they were not proud of…and then lied about doing them, or intentionally covered them up. So they each admitted grudgingly,

"No, we cannot."

Tigress sighed in frustration, and scanned the swiftly darkening sky, the end of Day Two of Dalang's illness. "I need to find Crane, or Zeng, or _someone_ who can fly. We need to get word to Po and Tai Lung. Remember our informant?" she asked Shifu. "He told Viper and Mantis, last night, that there was word of an army forming, led by a legendary assassin, with an unknown mission, heading directly towards Hunan."

Shifu paled, "You're saying he's coming to the Valley."

"If he isn't already here," she nodded, feeling slightly sick.

"_If_ that's the case," Sonam snorted, "We go out to meet him."

"No," Tigress said. "No, that's foolish. You know the rumors and the tales as much as we do; would _you_ go out to meet him?"

The look on the scarred snow leopard's face said enough. Even with thirty years of killing under his belt, not even the father of Tai Lung himself would dare take on such a creature alone. He rubbed the area covered by his eye patch distractedly and mumbled, "Probably not…"

Shifu looked back at his student. "Go back to Shou Gu. We need to find out what other assassins are saying. Word of mouth flies quickly within their ranks. If Koshchei is in fact on his way here, we need to be ready for him."

"If he _is_ on his way here," Sonam said, "Or here already, we need Po and Tai Lung back, immediately."

"We don't have 'immediately'," she countered. "They're at least two weeks away from the Valley. But that's where you come in; I've got a plan."

Sonam narrowed his one good eye, not seeing where she was going. Tigress looked up at the kitchen's ceiling to where her husband lay sleeping in the room above, then looked back at the snow leopard. "Asmodei Koshchei taught Dalang how to fight…and I want you to do the same."

"…Come again?" he asked with an arched brow.

"I know about the swords you made for him," she pointed at him. "I know you're skilled in wielding them. You can teach him, break down the lessons that Koshchei taught him."

"You expect me to overwrite eleven years of training in a few weeks?" he scoffed. "It can't be done!"

"Nothing is impossible," Shifu said. "I happen to agree with Tigress. Dalang knows exactly what Koshchei's limitations are, and if he is in top shape to defend his home and family, we may have a chance. By observing his fighting style, he may also teach us something about this assassin's style. All we know are rumors and speculation. I want facts." He looked at Tigress. "I will send Zeng with a message to the Phoenix Temple, calling Po and Tai Lung back."

"It takes two weeks to get to Tibet, Master. Which means they've only been at the temple two weeks, three at the most," she pointed out. "That's not enough time…"

"I know," he sighed. "But they are needed here. Perhaps they have learned something that can be used in battle." _At least I hope they have,_ he silently added. He turned to Sonam, "Her suggestion is a good one. Now, I ask you, as a friend, when Dalang is better, start training him. I, for one, want to know what he's capable of, as I'm sure we all do."

"Su Lin said his fever should break in a couple days," Tigress said. "But another few days of rest…"

"I'll do it." He glanced at both of them. "I already told him: I know what it's like having a young family, and wanting to protect them. You all know that Jiao blindsided me. And if this bloke is really coming here, damn right that boy needs to know what he's doing. Don't worry, love," he nodded at Tigress. "I'll whip him into shape. Maybe not as good a shape are _you_ are in, mind, but I'll do what I can."

"That's all I ask." Sighing, she looked back at her master. The red panda appeared deep in thought. Sensing her gaze, he looked back up at her, then thought for a moment longer before asking, "Where is our informant staying?"

"You mean to go talk to him?"

"If he's still in the Valley," Shifu answered, "I need to confront him before he leaves. You know how I feel about not knowing our enemy."

"Master, with all due respect," Tigress said, "maybe the Furious Five would give him more reason to open up."

"He'll want payment for his information."

"He's already been paid," she said. "We gave him thirty _yuan_ for his services."

"Pay him a hundred. No, two hundred." He sharpened his stare at her shocked expression. "The man is telling us everything he knows about Asmodei Koshchei. I think he deserves a little more compensation than usual."

* * *

"I can't believe we're doing this," Viper shook her head. "Doesn't he ask for enough already?"

"Considering who we're up against," Crane answered, "This is nothing."

"I don't like it," Mantis said resolutely. "This is straight from the Jade Palace's treasury, and we're just _giving_ it to him?"

"He won't give details easily," Monkey said. "You see how much we pay him just for the basic stuff!"

"Though I have a feeling that's why we're _all_ here," Crane said suspiciously, "Right, Tigress?"

The feline hid her smile beneath her cloak's hood. "That might have something to do with it. Now hush, we're here."

The inn was along a deserted dirt road, deep within the thick forests of the Valley's outskirts, a place known for drunken brawls and shady tenants. Their "friend" frequently stayed there, despite the wisdom that he should stay in a different place every time. After all, an elephant was a pretty conspicuous and unique species in the Valley of Peace…

Monkey pushed open the door and came face-to-face with the Sharpei dog who owned the tavern. The canine nodded once, pointing up the stairs, silently indicating that their meeting was in the same place as always.

The Furious Five made their way up the stairs, three cloaked figures (the two smallest of the Five hidden beneath the cloaks) going ignored by the other guests, just the way they liked it. The place was dingy, which was a shame, because it had once been the nicest tavern in the valley. Time, bankruptcy, and numerous managers later, the place had fallen into disrepair, and it was all the poor owner could do to keep the place open. One would think that with all his tenants were paying him for his discretion, that he would use some of the funds to fix the place up. But if his tenants didn't complain, what was the point?

Tigress stopped them outside the room at the end of the hall, and entered without knocking. They filed in and looked at the table in the middle of the suite. At least Shou Gu had good taste—it was easily the nicest room in the crumbling tavern, though that wasn't saying much.

And there he sat, candles illuminating the coins he stacked in front of him, counting almost obsessively. A few coins fell from his clumsy hooves. Mantis extricated himself from under Monkey's cloak and picked one up, jumping upon the table to place it neatly atop a stack. "You miss us?"

The occupant snorted, replying in a deep, drawling voice, "Hell, I just saw you yesterday. Or at least two of you…" he said, glancing at the two smallest of the quintet.

Tigress tore her hood off and stalked up to him. Their informant, an elephant, was fondly referred to as "Crap Ninja" by Mantis and Monkey, and in all honesty, it was a name well-deserved. Shou Gu hardly made any money from actual espionage and sabotage, and in fact was a mercenary for both sides of the law. Most of the Imperial Guardsmen didn't bother working with him, for fear of the Emperor finding out. Shou Gu, however, freely welcomed any kind of work, so long as his employers knew how to keep him happy. And what kept him happy was exactly what he was counting in front of him. He didn't bother to take off his black full body suit, nor did he remove his face mask. The Furious Five had never seen him without it, and Tigress would bet a good bit of money that no one had really seen his face for years, or even knew his real name; Shou Gu—"Mercenary"—was the only name he was known by. "We need information," she said

"I gave ya information," he responded, sweeping some coins into a pouch.

"We need more, about a certain individual."

"It'll cost ya thirty—"

"We want to know about Asmodei Koshchei."

His reaction startled them. He jumped out of his chair like he was struck by lightning, his big eyes widening beneath his heavy brow. Then he laughed uncomfortably, "Holy hell, sister, don't joke about somethin' like that…"

"I'm not joking," she said. "We have reason to believe he's on his way to the Valley of Peace. Is that true?"

He turned his back on her. "Forget it, there ain't enough money in the empire—"

Crane slammed the heavy bags on the table, making the piece of furniture buckle under its weight. The elephant mercenary turned to look back, and his jaw visibly dropped behind the mask.

"Holy…how much is that?"

"Two hundred," Crane answered. "I think that's significantly more than you make in a month."

And suddenly Shou Gu was back in his seat, sitting forward with genuine interest. "A'right, I'll talk. What d'ya wanna know?"

Viper slithered out from around her husband's shoulders and gave the informant a fierce look. "We know who he is, we know what the rumors are. What we want to know is the truth, and why he's on his way here."

"I'm surprised you don't know." He looked at Tigress. "He's probably comin' for your husband."

"What?" she gasped, the blood draining from her face. "Why would he…?"

"Ever since Jiao Shen died, there's a bounty out for any Jiao clan survivors," Shou Gu explained. "A few got rounded up by the Emperor's Guard and executed, but most of 'em got caught by assassins, like the Wu Sisters. Man, those girls _hated_ Shen."

"A lot of people hated Shen," Mantis said shortly. "But why are they after Dalang?"

"You kiddin'? The Imperial Guard may not be after him, not after the Emperor pardoned him, but the assassins and bandits still want him. A Jiao's a Jiao as far as they're concerned. Reason you probably haven't heard anything is 'cause he's married to _you_," he said, pointing to Tigress. "Face it, sister, no assassin worth their salt is stupid enough to take you on, even I a large group."

"Is that why Koshchei is after him?" Viper asked.

The masked elephant shrugged. "Who knows what that guy is thinking? He's nuts. You heard some of the rumors, like we all do. Not even the Wu Sisters would get on his bad side."

"It's our understanding," Crane said, quickly glancing at Tigress, "That one of Shen's sons got on his bad side…"

"Jiao Xiang," the elephant confirmed, nodding. "Yeah, I heard about that, too. Dunno if that's true, though; not a lot of people comfortable talkin' about it."

"But you know something else," Monkey said suspiciously.

"Aw, c'mon man, you don't want me to tell you…"

"Yes, we do," Tigress snapped. "We're paying you twice what you make in a month, and you're going to tell us, or we'll forcefully take off that mask and expose you for the stool pigeon you are, understand?"

Shou Gu glared at her from behind his mask, then sighed. "A'right, I didn't wanna tell you this, since I hear the Dragon Warrior ain't here right now…"

A look of horror fell across the Five, even before the elephant said, "Assassins got it out for the Dragon Warrior, and Tai Lung, too."

"How do you know they're not in the Valley?" Mantis demanded.

"What, you kiddin'? Last few times I was here, you brought some of their cooking! And seein' how you didn't bring food with you this time, that's how I know they ain't here. Hell, I'd work for free if you kept doing tha—I shouldn't've said that."

"That _was_ a rather stupid move, even for you," Tigress said. "We're not telling you where they are, or where they went."

"Lady, I don't care," he shrugged. "Ain't my job. I just keep an ear out for trouble." He sat back, visibly thinking, then after a pause said,

"I'll tell you everything I know about this guy, just so you know what you're up against. Asmodei Koshchei is nuts, certifiably insane. He's killed enough people to be executed ten times over. I never met the guy, never want to, but I've met guys who _did_ work with him, and I'll tell ya this much: he's real conceited, like thinks he's the best thing since they invented paper. You can trust this guy as far as you can throw him…well, considering how strong you are, Master Tigress, I wager that's pretty far…"

"So he is a liar," Monkey said.

"More 'n that," Shou Gu stated. "He lies and steals a lot, sure, and when he gets violent he never shows any guilt over it; it's like he just don't care. Worse thing, he got this fake charm, right? He's a smooth talker, which can getcha into trouble if you're not careful. Ain't got no friends, claims he don't need 'em; too impulsive to keep up relationships. A lotta his old comrades say he's too reckless. An' he's got a temper worse th'n yours," he nodded at Tigress. "Like, no control, right? He can be nice one minute then kickin' yer ass the next. An' he won't be nice about it, neither."

"This is an awful lot of information," Crane said guardedly. "Normally we have to twist your arm to get even a peep out of you."

The pachyderm looked the avian in the eye. "Look, far as I'm concerned, there's a damn good reason y'all came out here tonight. I normally get one or two of ya. What d'ya think I'm thinkin', seein' you all here? I ain't stupid—you wanna take him out. Ya wanna kill him, is that right?"

The Furious Five paused, shared looks between each other, then all slowly nodded. The elephant smiled beneath the mask. "See? _That's_ what I'm sayin'. You got no idea how dangerous he is. He don't care about anyone's safety, hates authority figures, and worse, he's a loose canon…"

"You said that already," Monkey glared. "Get on with it!"

"Hey, I said it only 'cause I need ya to understand…he don't follow society's rules. Y'all know I don't attack kids, or women. There's a code with assassins, y'see, that kids and women are off-limits. Even the Wu Sisters understand that."

Tigress looked at her friends. Each of them sported an uncomfortable look, but they had to concede that the elephant was right. As fearsome and infamous as the female snow leopard assassins were, they only attacked and killed men.

"You're saying he just doesn't care?" Viper asked.

The elephant shook his head. "No way. I heard a rumor that he was like this even as a kid, y'know? He liked hurtin' people even then. He hates to be bored, and never takes on a job that he doesn't see as a challenge. And lady, don't even get me started on some of his favorite tortures!"

"We're not concerned with that," Tigress said shortly. "Tell us how he fights."

The elephant snorted and chuckled, "Straight t' the point, as always. Always liked that about you. Well, all I gotta say is that if ya wanna win, get him mad."

"Get him _mad_?" Monkey skeptically asked. "Won't that make it worse?"

"No," Crane said, fully understanding. "He gets sloppy when he gets mad."

"Yup," the black-robed spy nodded. "Looks like that fancy academy taught ya somethin' after all, Master Crane."

Crane ignored the jibe. "How do we get him mad?"

"Funny you should mention…" the pachyderm said, leaning back in his chair, which now threatened to break beneath his weight. "He hates rude people."

Tigress mulled over this, even as her mind was in turmoil. She was trying to process all this new information, knowing that this knowledge could mean life or death for her, her friends, and her family. But the same thought kept swirling in her head: her husband was a target for assassination? Sure, she was used to the idea of being an assassin's target herself—she was a national personality, and a threat to the outlaw's way of life. But the fact that her husband's life was in danger…

Shou Gu cleared his throat, bringing her back to the moment. "Y'know what? Keep half."

"Half? You mean…you only want one hundred?" Viper asked, aghast. "You've _never_ turned down a payment."

He stared at all five of them, and replied, perfectly serious. "You take down Asmodei Koshchei, and that's all the payment I need."

"So why hold on to the hundred at all?" Monkey accused.

The elephant shrugged. "A guy's gotta pay bills. Consider this a discount, for goodwill."

They took that as incentive to get out. The longer they stayed, the more the elephant might want. With Mantis hidden in Monkey's cloak, and Viper coiling under Crane's, the Furious Five stood and walked out, taking the second bag of money with them.

Outside, and far away from the inn, the quintet walked in absolute silence until they made it back to the village gates. Safely inside the village walls, Crane turned to Tigress and asked, "Are you okay? I know that had to be hard to hear…"

Tigress was shaking her head in disbelief. "How…I don't understand how Dalang could have been tricked…"

"Because this guy is a manipulative a-hole," Mantis said, poking his head out from under Monkey's cloak. "And you said so yourself, he caught him when he was young, took advantage of him when he was down. Hard to see how any kid could resist that."

"I wonder how much he was influenced, though," Viper wondered. "I know Ms. Lien said something about rehabilitation, whatever that means…"

Tigress paused in her step, the revelation so obvious she was astounded she hadn't thought of it sooner. Quickening her pace, she ran ahead of her friends. "Then she's the next person I'm going to talk to!"

* * *

Wu Lien was alone in her dance studio that same night, sitting at her desk and consulting star charts by the light of a single lantern. Her classes had been done for the day, and the semester was coming to a close for the winter. In the meantime, she kept warm with the brazier next to her, periodically adding more lumps of coal. She licked her thumb and turned a page in her almanac, her green eyes scanning the charts.

"Shifu must have taught you that knocking is unnecessary," she said off-handedly into the empty room.

"Shifu taught me a lot of things," Tigress said as she entered the room. "Right now, I'm more concerned with _your_ teaching."

"I admire anyone who continues their education," Wu said humorously. "But take my advice, dear, and stay away from dance; I'm afraid it just doesn't suit you."

Tigress walked over and stood in front of the old red panda; Wu sobered immediately at the look on the feline's face.

"Dalang told me who trained him to fight—who _really_ trained him," Tigress said.

Wu actually gasped. He had _told_ her? "Good lord, child, what did you do, threaten him?"

"I think the nightmares he had spooked him more than any threat I could ever make," Tigress said, kneeling in front of the small desk. Clenching her fists, she looked right into the matriarch's eyes. "_Something_ made him tell me now. I don't care what it was, because now we can fight it—him."

"So you've heard of Koshchei?" Wu asked with supreme interest.

"Many things, from many sources. I've told Shifu and Sonam, and my friends know. But for my husband's sake, I don't want it becoming common knowledge."

"A wise choice; something like this is damaging to any reputation, no matter how rehabilitated the individual."

"That's why I'm here."

"Why you're here?" she asked curiously, closing her almanac.

"I need to know how you rehabilitated Dalang."

Wu stopped, her small hands resting on the book cover in front of her. Though looking right at the feline, she looked lost in her thoughts. Closing her eyes, she heavily exhaled, then turned to face Tigress. "Are you sure you want to know?"

She really wasn't sure, but she said, "Yes. I remember what Shifu said, once," the tiger master said, leaning slightly forward. "People change; the person Dalang was as a teenager is not the person he is now. If he was trained by Asmodei Koshchei, I need to know how damaged he was…"

"Tigress," Wu said firmly, "I will not keep the truth from you, but you need to understand that hearing this will be hard to bear. Think how learning about his past with the Jiao affected you. This is perhaps more damning than even that."

"Dalang was manipulated, molded to follow in Koshchei's footsteps…you knew how to fix that, and you did."

"Let me be clear," the red panda female stated, "You aren't going to like some of the things I'm going to tell you—for you asked, and this is something you need to know—so I am warning you ahead of time. If you don't think you can hear it now, just tell me, and I will keep it until you are ready."

Tigress thought this over and looked back to Wu, who remained respectfully silent as the striped feline considered her options. The red panda studied the other female's expression, then held her breath as Tigress spoke.

"I don't think I want details…I just want to know what happened, and how you…"

"How I fixed him?" Wu finished. "I didn't 'fix' anything, dear. The seeds had already been sown for a recovery; he just needed a nudge in the right direction." The red panda beckoned her guest. "We'll continue this in my office. This is too open, too much of a chance for spies. Besides, you'll want to sit down for all of this."

Tigress swallowed hard as her heart constricted. Following the old woman, she wasn't sure if she could be able to handle these revelations at all.

* * *

Sonam was back up at the forge, sifting through his arsenal of weapons. He had plenty of spears, many knives, and a few swords, but nothing that could match the twin swords he'd given Dalang. Cursing himself for this oversight, he leaned back against his anvil and crossed his arms. He rubbed his eye patch uncomfortably, feeling the raised bumps of the scars underneath the black cloth.

It made sense now, now that he thought about it. He had assumed Dalang's guarded nature had more to do with his upbringing as Shen's youngest son; anyone raised in such an environment was bound to be emotionally or mentally closed off. It never occurred to him that there was a reason far darker than that.

"Maybe I should have stuck around," he said into the dark forge. "Maybe it wouldn't've happened."

Metal clanged together as Shifu pushed a pile of steel scraps aside as he too searched the armory. "What's done is done—how were you to know when, as you said yourself, Koshchei's notoriety escalated _after_ leaving Jiao's employ?"

"Should've at least taken the boy with me," he said guiltily. "I endangered him, leaving him there like that."

"Sonam," the red panda reminded, "You were an assassin—that's not the kind of life to bring a child up in, you know that."

"He would've fared better with me than if he'd stayed as Shen's son."

Shifu didn't say anything to that, which Sonam took as silent agreement. Shifu didn't need to know the details—matter of fact, he didn't even _want_ to know. But as the two old-timers searched for weapons to arm the villagers with in the event of Koshchei's arrival, they struggled to digest this information.

Shifu stopped suddenly, holding a half-finished knife in his hand, then snorted and dropped it in a pile. "This is lunacy—we can't expect the _villagers_ and _farmers_ to know how to fight that monster!"

"So what's the plan, old rat? Evacuate?"

"We have to do _something_."

"We don't even know if Koshchei's here yet, or how far away he is. Either way, what good will it do to raise an alarm and cause a panic?"

"Would you rather have a panic, or scores of dead innocents?"

Sonam closed his good eye and took in a deep breath, counting to ten just as Mei Xing had advised. "Here's what we know," the snow leopard said, holding up a claw. "One, Koshchei is certifiably insane."

"Right."

"Two, he's much more savage than Shen, and a great deal more twisted."

"Three," Shifu said, "He's so notorious he has even the Mongols nervous."

"Four," Sonam said. "He doesn't know kung fu."

"That could work to our advantage," Shifu mused, stroking his whiskers as he thought. "Much of kung fu has to do with speed and grace. My bet is that since Dalang has neither speed nor real grace—"

"That's not entirely true," Sonam said in the tiger's defense. "The boy can run pretty damn fast, and he's got grace; he needs grace to be able to cook the way he does."

"Do I need to bring up the kitchen fire he started at the Dragon Boat festival last year?"

"That was an accident."

"He _tripped_ over a barrel of _cooking oil_! A barrel as high as his _waist_!"

"Could've happened to any one of us." Sonam wavered after the flat look the red panda sent him. "All right, maybe he has his clumsy moments…"

"_Moments_?"

"Point is," the feline elder continued, "that boy's probably more skilled than either of us ever gave him credit. Remember during the Jiao War, he held his own very well with just a few knives. Knife fighting requires speed, and it requires dexterity. Sure, maybe he was a little rusty, but he knew what he was doing."

"Shang wasn't kidding when he said his brother was skilled," the red panda agreed. "But as far as we know, Koshchei doesn't use any real weapons."

"He didn't need to; he mostly used brute strength and intimidation. The latter of the two…well, you'd be amazed how effective a weapon it can be alone."

"I wonder how much of it is talk, and how much is actual skill?" Shifu wondered. "Mantis and Monkey informed me of what they learned from Shou Gu; it still sounds like mostly rumor and no concrete facts, but we know more than we did."

"Not much to go on though." Sonam hesitated, then cleared his throat. "We still haven't agreed what to do about the civilians."

"I don't want to raise a panic," Shifu sighed, looking pained and drawn. "But I don't want them taken off-guard, either. We had a close call with Tai Lung's return, and an even closer one when the Jiao arrived."

"So call them back up to the Jade Palace."

"The Palace doesn't have the resources it did two years ago, in the middle of summer. We are fast approaching winter, and even if we brought up food and other resources, it wouldn't be enough to sustain the entire Valley if a prolonged siege were to occur."

"So what do you expect us to do, then?" Sonam looked around the forge. "Even if I started now, I wouldn't have enough time to forge enough weapons for everyone. I suppose us trained warriors could make due with the weapons in the Sacred Hall—"

"Absolutely not!" Shifu snapped. "Those are sacred relics and are _not_ to be used in combat!"

"Shifu, there aren't enough weapons in this whole damn valley to go around!" Sonam shouted. "And unless you want those farmers and their little old grannies to use their pitchforks and broomsticks, I don't see how this is going to—"

Both of them froze, stared at each other in amazement, and simultaneously realized where the answer to their predicament lay.

"So," Shifu said with a smirk. "Shall we reconvene once I've located my wife?"

* * *

"Take the tea," Wu said to Tigress, "It will help."

Tigress arched a brow and quipped, "What, no wine?"

Wu shook her head, "No dear, you need to be able to walk home after this." The red panda woman sighed and poured herself a cup of tea as well. "Well…where to begin…"

"How he came to find you," Tigress offered as she sipped the tea.

"Ah yes, well, I'm sure Dalang told you that his brother directed him to me."

"Did he know you? Shang, I mean."

"Not personally, no, he knew me only by reputation. He'd heard about my habit of 'taking in strays'…which was true. I operated a sort of half-way house for orphans, runaways and the like. Most that came under my care, I gave them food and a place to sleep, helped them find jobs, things like that. I received a lot of daughters running away from arranged marriages, wives and mothers fleeing abusive households with their children, and younger sons who could not make their parents happy…so many stories, poor things.

"As I'm sure you know, Su Lin was my most recent 'newborn' at the time. That's what we called the new kids, 'newborns'. Dalang showed up on my doorstep with a letter from his brother—I recognized the Jiao clan seal right away. But I noticed that boy's eyes even sooner. He has _some_ semblance of his father's looks, but heavens, he was—and is—so much like his mother. He was seventeen when he came to me, and Shang's letter said he needed a place to lay low, someplace to disappear to. I began making arrangements to send him out of China, someplace where Shen would never venture…" Wu took a deep, shaky breath, "Then I noticed some of his…habits."

"Habits?" Tigress asked.

"This will be hard to hear," Wu warned. "Are you _sure_ you want me to continue?"

She didn't. Her mind was screaming at her to stop this right now…but her heart told her that her marriage would not survive if she didn't know the truth, or know how to help her husband. "Now more than ever," she said, her voice wavering.

The red panda nodded and continued, albeit with some hesitation. "He scared the others, and I mean he _terrified_ them. Being a tiger had something to do with it, true. But he had a temper…such a temper, worse than yours, worse than Tai Lung's. He played with knives, and I don't mean with just mild fascination; he seemed obsessed with them, with seeing what he could do with them. He'd spend hours just sharpening knives, and any other blades in the house; sometimes he would fashion rudimentary knives out of common _harmless_ household objects. He made a game out of throwing knives at the walls, even if someone was walking along one at the time. He _liked_ scaring those children. It was frightening. He got mad at the simplest things, the smallest irritations. More than once he lashed out at Su Lin when she was trying to be helpful, but to my knowledge, he never actually hit her; if he had, I would've killed him, and that's no exaggeration. I only tolerated his rages because I knew he'd be out of my fur sooner rather than later."

Tigress gulped down a mouthful of tea, swallowing down this startling information more than the drink. She knew well enough that when Wu threatened physical harm…she would actually do it, given the right circumstances. "But I thought you were close to his mother?"

"I _was_. But I was still heartbroken; I had trained Ming Hua to never accept or settle for anything. I trained her to be independent. I warned her what kind of man Jiao Shen was…and yet she still ran off with him. Perhaps I was still bitter about that loss, and that explains why I was so hard on Dalang.

"But one day, Dalang took it too far. He nearly killed one of my charges, just for making fun of him; the boy had said something to him about 'being a stupid orphan', and a 'worthless youngest son'…terribly cruel, yes, but not worth dying over. The poor boy only barely survived the stab wound, but Dalang was in deep trouble."

"Wait—Dalang, _my husband_, stabbed and nearly killed an innocent _child_?"

"The time for babying him and ignoring his faults was over, at that point," Wu said, completely bypassing Tigress' question. "I isolated him in the root cellar, and left him there for three days in complete darkness, with no food, no water, no weapons, nothing he could use to get out except his own strength to break down the door." She sighed. "I didn't find out until that third day what his real problem was. I thought he was inherently bad, like his father. It never occurred to me that there was someone else, someone worse, who had contributed to his upbringing."

"Three days without food or water…" Tigress said, shaking her head in horror. "That could have killed him; how _could_ you?"

"I had tried everything else; believe me that was the only time I resorted to such treatment. Seeing what it had done to him…" the red panda shuddered. "Never again…I can never forgive myself for what I did to him."

She looked up at Tigress's uncertain, questioning gaze and answered, "I broke him. Completely. He was weak, dehydrated and starving; I had never seen anyone living look so pale. Su Lin and I slowly nursed him back to health, but we had to be careful it wasn't too fast a recovery—we didn't know if he was still dangerous." She paused, then laughed softly, "Matter of fact, the same treatment I used on Dalang was what I used to treat Tai Lung. Dalang was out of commission for a year…"

"…Just like Tai Lung was," Tigress finished as she connected the dots. "That has to explain why he reformed so quickly, so completely—you had done it before."

"To some damn good results, if I do say so myself," Wu smirked, toasting the feline with her teacup before taking a sip. "And I think you'd agree."

"But…a murderer? I mean, sure," Tigress said, fiddling with her teacup, "He killed his uncle and his brother, but both times were in self-defense, right?"

"Of course—if there was anyone worse than Shen, it had to be Shen's brother. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and that one was the worst! And, well, you know well enough about Huang.

"But in that year, the year he turned eighteen, I had broken him down. For a time, he acted like a scared child…it was heartbreaking, thinking what had happened to him. He had never been treated as a child should have been treated. Shen had been emotionally and mentally abusive despite the fact he apparently valued Dalang as a potential soldier for his army. I suppose that bastard thought the abuse would make a man out of him…how or why, I'll never know.

"He caught a fever that year, during a typhoid epidemic while we lived in the Kunlun Mountains; it's a miracle he survived. He was already weak enough from the lack of food and water, falling ill was just too easy. But I think as a result of it, he had severe hallucinations. That's how I learned about Asmodei Koshchei, and what he had done."

Wu poured more tea for the tiger master. "Evidently, his name—_Ash-Mo-Day_—is the name of a demon, and a '_kosh-chay_' is a malevolent spirit from the far north. I assume it's a name he picked for himself, because I can't imagine someone naming their child after something so awful. During his fever, Dalang told us everything. Some things he refused to say in front of Su Lin—proof that he had started to care more for strangers—and other things I had to force out of him. There were some things he told me that still frighten me. He had very little respect for those physically weaker than him, and felt it was his divine right to oppress them. He told me the only reason he refused to kill on Shen's command was because it wasn't a battlefield killing; they were civilians, not combatants, and he didn't consider it a true show of his abilities if he killed defenseless civilians. He knew only warfare…and cooking. That was the key. When he was well enough to stand again, I let him cook his own meals. I watched him like a hawk. After a time, I took a risk and let him cook for the other children."

"How did that go?"

"It would have gone swimmingly, if he'd known the fish had gone bad. I'm afraid the resulting food poisoning did little for his reputation. Eventually, the younger children came to like him. He got better at cooking. His earliest attempts were passable, but with practice he got steadily better. Su Lin helped with that, teaching him new techniques. But he still had that temper."

Wu smiled, then started laughing. Before Tigress could ask, she explained herself, "Then one night, Su Lin proved that pandas _can _be a force to be reckoned with. When Dalang lost his temper at her, she slapped him."

"Su Lin. _Su Lin_…slapped Dalang?"

"Don't look so surprised," Wu smiled. "I'm told her mother was a hell of a battle-axe, herself. And given how protective she's gotten of Mei Xing since Po and Tai Lung left…well, I don't know about you, but I'm glad she's grown a backbone!"

"That makes two of us."

"Well, after she slapped him, that started to change his perceptions of 'lesser creatures'. She is such a forgiving person, and I think his spending so much time with her was what really set him on the course for a complete transformation." Wu poured another cup of tea for her. "How are you feeling?"

Tigress hesitated, and stared down at her teacup. "I don't know. I honestly can't believe…it seems like we're talking about two completely different people."

"We are," the red panda said. "Shifu was right when he said that people change. Some change a little, others do a complete heel-step-turn. Dalang may have had anger issues, but I learned it had little to do with being his father's son, and more to do with not being _treated_ as a son. Ironically, his brother Shang was a better father than Shen ever was, and I think, in the end, that's what saved him. True, Shang had the Dragon Rage…which probably explains Dalang's temper and his rather alarming violent trends back then…but the point is…"

"Shang actually cared," Tigress finished. "He cared enough to risk his life to protect his brother's…he risked everything for him."

Wu nodded, "Exactly. In an interesting turn, it was Shang who actually encouraged his brother's culinary pursuits. At fourteen, Dalang was already cooking his family's meals."

"I bet Shen loved that," Tigress dourly said.

"Actually, he did." Wu looked halfway between surprised and amused. "He was a great fan of those spicy chili dumplings that are such best-sellers at the Long and Feng. You can ask Dalang sometime—he told me he used to make them on a regular basis to assuage Shen's rage. Ah, but, Shen still wanted his son to be a soldier…being a 'simple cook' just wouldn't do. He felt that any man who didn't want to fight was a coward, and he wouldn't tolerate any of his sons being cowards…even if one of them was a skilled chef."

"But if his cooking was only passable, how did he become such a good chef?"

"I sent him to culinary school. He begged me for perhaps, oh, two years before I allowed him to go, but he had to pay his own way. We were living in Guangdong at the time, so he learned the Cantonese style of cooking. He preferred it. He liked stir fries well enough, but he always loved dim sum. Once he had his certificate in hand, we opened up a small stand along the Bing Yuan Road, selling dim sum to passing travelers. We had a good deal, then. Business couldn't have been better. I had to learn how to run a restaurant, and become a better business manager, Su Lin became the head of our 'customer service', and Dalang, of course, was our chef. We were very popular with the soldiers that traveled through there, and certainly with the merchants. But all this good fortune eventually backfired…"

"The Jiao found you."

"Jiao Ren, Shen's older brother. The only reason Shen inherited everything and Ren didn't was because Ren couldn't match his brother in battle; so the title of patriarch and all perks that go with it went to Shen. Probably for the better—Ren was, if possible, worse than his brother. When he strolled into our establishment, and saw Dalang, he almost made it back to the horde to tell Shen what he'd seen. He didn't even make it to the door before Dalang had killed him-one knife thrown at his back was all it took. It solved one problem: Ren wouldn't tell his brother that his son was still alive. But it opened up something worse: Ren wouldn't go back, and the Jiao would send someone to look for him. So we packed up everything that night, all the things we could carry and the clothes on our backs and left. We set fire to the restaurant for good measure. We followed the Bing Yuan Road until we got to the Thread of Hope, and decided we would be safer—for good—if we settled in the Valley of Peace. So we did."

"But you found Tai Lung along the way."

"And we had a hell of a time smuggling him into the Valley. We didn't know who he was when we picked him up. He was just some poor soul found freezing in the snow on a mountain pass. We had no idea he was Tai Lung, at the time. It wasn't until we had settled into the village that we realized who we had. Once we knew, though, I actually wanted to get rid of him."

"_You_ wanted to get rid of him? But you were his greatest advocate!"

Wu sighed, "I know. But Tigress, I am an old woman, and I am tired of running, tired of hiding things, tired of keeping secrets. Rehabilitating Tai Lung would have been my greatest feat."

"Even though you knew his parents?" the tiger asked.

The red panda gave her an exasperated look and replied, "_Especially_ because I knew his parents!"

"So if _you_ wanted to get rid of him…how did he end up staying?"

"Dalang was his advocate."

Tigress let this sink in, her teacup lying cold and forgotten on the table in front of her. Dalang had spoken for Tai Lung, but why? She thought about it…and thought hard. "He couldn't turn him out," she realized. "'Nobody is that heartless', that's what he said. Turning him out would have made him as heartless as Shen or Koshchei."

"Especially Koshchei," Wu nodded. "And he made a very good argument. At the time he was still terrified of being discovered by his family and killed. He figured with Tai Lung on our side, as our ally, he'd never have to worry. As it turns out, he was very right about that. But I had such a good relationship with Nima and Sonam, I guess that only helped matters. I've wanted to tell Tai Lung who really advocated his staying, but Dalang didn't want me to for some reason."

Tigress fell silent, thinking over everything that had been said. She said nothing when Wu topped off her teacup, and was still quiet when the red panda settled back in her chair. "But now Koshchei is coming after him."

"It would appear so," Wu agreed.

"Why? The Jiao clan is dead and gone, and Dalang means no harm and is no threat. Why does Koshchei want him dead?"

"Who knows? For some reason or another, that mad leopard sees your husband as a threat. Perhaps he is and we just don't know it. As good and as kind as he is now, he is still a Jiao, and he was still trained to fight and kill by the likes of Asmodei Koshchei. Perhaps he thinks Dalang is more dangerous than even Tai Lung in his worst days."

"I find that hard to believe." Tigress sighed, "I convinced Sonam to teach him what he knows about swordplay."

Wu Lien sighed heavily and drained her cup. "Good luck to him, I say."

"To Dalang?"

"No, to Sonam. Though I've never seen Dalang fight, I've a feeling Sonam's bitten off far more than he can chew."

Tigress thought about this. When she had met her husband, she had never suspected him of having a single violent bone in his body. When she first found that he knew some kung fu, it didn't seem possible, like it didn't fit his personality; as it turned out, he was only a passable fighter…or so he said. But if he had lied about his abilities, lied about his family, and lied about his training…what else had he lied about?

She almost hadn't believed him when he told her who he was related to; she accepted it as truth only because no one would lie about something like that. Who would _want_ to be associated with such a family? No, he was a chef, with a roguish smile, piercing green eyes, manners to die for, and a man who loved her more than life itself. How could her husband and this seventeen-year-old stranger be the same person? It didn't seem possible. The boy they had just talked about was not her husband, she knew that. So now she was faced with a horrible question: who was the _real _Jiao Dalang?

* * *

Shang's cries brought him back to reality, and Dalang squinted and rubbed his eyes. The baby's cries grew louder. The rest of the house was quiet, and the space beside him normally occupied by his wife was empty. Dalang groaned and rolled onto his side to face the crib. He wasn't in any condition to care for a child, but if he was the only one there…

But he wasn't. He noticed, in the dim light of the waning quarter moon shining through the window, there was a figure standing over his son's crib. The same figure he'd seen standing at the altar in front of his mother's portrait. A tall tiger, cloaked in dark ragged robes, standing over the crying baby and simply staring…and Dalang knew that silhouette.

"I'm hallucinating."

"That is likely," the tiger replied with the deep rumbling yet cultured purr Dalang remembered so well, and thought he would never to hear again. "Those medicines are known for such side effects. Unfortunate the circumstances may be, I can no longer afford to wait." Jiao Shen turned to look at his son, his specter nothing like the man who had died as little as two years ago; he looked ghoulish, gaunt, with dark circles under his dark eyes, but those eyes were just as fierce and penetrating as ever. "My time is limited, and we have much to talk about."

Dalang arched a brow. "You look good; y'know, for being dead and all."

Shen rolled his eyes and muttered something about Dalang being "…so much like your mother…" and turned away from the crib. Baby Shang still cried, spooked by the sudden negative energy in the room. "You no doubt are aware what is coming," the departed patriarch said. "Asmodei Koshchei is on his way to this valley."

Dalang took in a deep, shaky breath. "I had a feeling."

"I don't need to tell you the gravity of this situation."

"No, you don't."

"It goes without saying that he must be destroyed. Your training in the coming weeks will prepare you. You must be prepared by the winter solstice."

Dalang stared at him. "Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?"

Shen arched a brow, but the rest of his face was a perfect expressionless mask. "Do you know nothing of spirits? This is unfinished business. I was unable to kill that monster; your brothers were unable to kill him, so now the honor falls to you. It is your destiny. I cannot rest or proceed to my next existence until Asmodei is gone."

"You're actually getting a _next_ existence?" his son asked, impressed. "I thought you were supposed to drown in the Lake of Blood for an eternity for all the shit you pulled."

"That is an entirely unrelated matter," Shen said shortly. "And I would watch your language in front of the child."

"He's seven months old, he won't remember."

"You'd be surprised what children remember."

Dalang stared at him again. "You said something about training."

Shen made a face, and spit out the next word like he had an awful taste in his mouth. "Sonam, he will teach you sword fighting, a style that not even Shang knew."

Dalang smirked. "I bet you love that."

Shen ignored him. "Listen to his lessons, even if they seem contradictory. Loathe as I am to admit, he is very skilled. I would say he's not an easy man to kill, but you already knew that. Impossible as it may sound, if anyone can reverse the eleven years of training Asmodei gave you, it is Sonam."

Dalang paused, not taking his eyes off the ghost of his hated father. "Why are you here? Why are you doing this? You hate me. You've _always_ hated me. Why should you give a damn about me now?"

Shen narrowed his dark eyes. "Like it or not, _son_, I cared a great deal for you. I cared for all of you."

"Bull shit."

"Believe what you want, I _did_ care. Perhaps not as much as I should have, after your mother passed, but care I did."

"Didn't you try to kill me once or twice? Or did that part slip your mind?"

"We didn't part on the best of terms, I admit."

"You think?"

"If you will permit me, then, perhaps if I had been a better father, none of this would have happened."

Dalang froze, now staring in back amazement. Shen looked back at the crib, where the baby had sat up, staring back at him in awe. "I am not surprised you named him Shang. He was a better father to you than I ever was. He certainly deserves to be honored."

"I have other reasons for hating you, you know I do," Dalang growled. "Like how you treated my mother, and all her friends and family."

"Had you _met_ her family, you would have done exactly as I did," Shen said through clenched teeth. "Rich, yes, but the biggest boors and most immoral people I've ever met—"

"Coming from you, I guess that says something."

"Quite. Your maternal grandfather committed sins sometimes far graver than any of mine. Your maternal grandmother was a harpy in every sense of the word, and your maternal aunts and uncles made _my_ siblings look like contributing members of society. Every last one of them is a hungry ghost now, and every last one of them deserves it. How in heaven's name Ming Hua turned out the way she did I'll never know."

"The school," Dalang answered. "You know that as well as I do."

"Perhaps. That school did mean a lot to her."

"And you destroyed it," Dalang accused. "You burned it to the ground, your men raped the students and the ones they didn't enslave, they murdered in cold blood. And what you did to Auntie—"

"_First_ of all," Shen snapped, "That woman is made of tougher stuff than you think. Secondly, rumors of my cruelty have at times been greatly exaggerated. I only went to the Lotus School to claim my bride; I brought the army with me as intimidation. I never meant to destroy the school—it was an empty threat to get her to come willingly. I never authorized an attack, but once it had started, it was impossible to stop. What happened that night is regrettable, but under no circumstances can I be blamed for what happened."

"So she wasn't raped?"

"Whom?"

"Auntie."

Shen's expression shifted, to a look of complete surprise and disbelief, a look he had never seen on his father's face. "Boy, are you _out of your senses_? What gave you such an idea?"

"She said you ruined her."

Much to his shock...Shen looked and sounded genuinely insulted: "Ruined her _professional_ reputation, perchance, but never her reputation as a _woman_; what kind of man do you take me for! Destroying that school ruined her reputation as a teacher and as a warrior; who would learn kung fu from someone so disgraced? Even Master Shifu, as I recall, spent many years in isolation between Tai Lung's rampage and taking on the Furious Five as students, and he is the best kung fu teacher in China…or so they say. And just as with Shifu, I may not respect Wu Lien, but I know better than to outright attack her. Her school was destroyed, and her kung fu style was proved imperfect; she had put such faith into her own style that she didn't bother to look for any flaws that could harm her students. In the end it was her pride that ruined her, and I became the scapegoat." After a pause, Shen set his jaw and let out a long sigh through his nose. That was how Dalang knew he would say something he didn't like to admit. "You will need her, your 'Auntie' Wu Lien. She knows a lot about Asmodei, and will be a great help in the coming days."

"You still haven't told me why you're helping me, and why I should believe you." Dalang glared at him. "Maybe you're only a figment of my imagination, maybe this is a dream, maybe I took too much medicine and I'm having a bad trip, but I know there is no way you're coming here to 'help' me out of the goodness of your heart, if you ever had one. What do you have to gain?"

Shen glared back at him, then said in a low, dangerous tone, "Think of me what you will, I loved your mother, and still do. I have done horrible things in my life, I admit that. But I am not the only one held back by unfinished business."

Dalang stared back at him, suddenly seeing him in a way he would have never imagined. "So the summarized version of your message is that Koshchei's coming to the Valley—I assume to kill me—and I need to train with Sonam in order to win."

"That is the abridged version, yes."

"And if Koshchei is killed—"

"Not killed, Dalang," Shen interrupted. He narrowed his dark eyes and emphasized, "_Destroyed_. There needs to be absolutely nothing left of him. Nothing. Not even ashes. Not a trace of that monster, of that…_beast_, as your mother preferred calling him, should be left behind. Anything less, and neither I nor your mother nor brothers can rest."

That last sentence made Dalang feel like he'd been sucker-punched in the gut. Well, sure, he didn't care about Shen…but his mother and eldest brother were a different story. "They can't rest? None of them?"

"Unfinished business," was all he said. "You are the last Jiao. You are our only hope."

"That hurt to admit, didn't it?"

"More than you know."

Dalang paused, looked over at his son's crib, then back at his father's ghost. "You don't have much time, do you?"

"I do not."

"I have one question."

"Only one?"

"How's Mom?"

An unreadable expression crossed Shen's face, and he only responded, "She is not where I am in the Underworld. So that means she is well." The tiger patriarch hesitated, then said with an exhale, "And she misses you."

Dalang looked away, knowing that Shen knew this was a lame attempt to hide the tears.

"Dalang?"

"What?"

"Wake up, lad, we've got to talk."

Dalang's eyes shot open and he sat up in bed. Sonam sat on the edge of the bed, staring at him through his one good eye. The tiger looked around the room: Shang's crib was empty, it was daytime outside, but the curtains and shutters were pulled tight. A set of candles illuminated the room, and on his beside table was a tray of bland foods for his breakfast.

"You alright, son?" Sonam asked. "Ye look like ye've seen a ghost."

Dalang gave him a flat look, then debated telling him about his…dream? Vision? Hallucination? "What the hell did Su give me?"

"Why d'you ask?"

"I dreamed—hallucinated?—that Shen visited me here."

"Uh-huh," the snow leopard evenly replied. "He say or do anything?"

"Just said that Koshchei's on his way and should be here by Winter solstice, you're going to train me to fight, that I should listen to you, and that my mom misses me."

Sonam stared back at him, incredulous, then slowly and carefully replied, "Shen just showed up here, while you were asleep, and told you all this?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"All I remember is 'unfinished business'. That's all he said."

"Oh there's unfinished business, alright," the one-eyed snow leopard said. "Starting tomorrow, we're training you."

"So you're starting me with basic meditative exercises, right?" No answer. "Right?"

This time Sonam grinned, and Dalang felt his stomach flip-flopping, and it had nothing to do with his sickness.

"Sometimes," Sonam said with a cheeky grin, "Ye gotta learn to run before you can crawl."

Dalang leaned back into the pillows and sighed through his nose. "We start tomorrow?"

Sonam nodded and stood to leave. "Tomorrow. Su Lin's just been to see you, says your fever's broken, so just take the day to rest. If we have until the first day of winter, then we've no time to lose."

Dalang closed his eyes and tried to re-envision his dream. It had to be a dream. Or a hallucination. Of all the ghosts from his past to come up and visit during a fevered dream, why was it Shen? The tiger hadn't been kidding: Shen hated him. He would never believe the old tiger had loved him, he would never believe he even liked him. It wasn't in Shen's nature to do that.

He opened his eyes when he realized…

Shen had first appeared to him, standing in front of the altar…staring at his mother's picture. In his flashbacks, the patriarch had isolated himself during the cremation…and at the time Dalang thought it was because Shen didn't love her as he said. Strangely, Dalang did recall—very faintly—that Shen had been more involved with his upbringing when he was younger. There was a very—_very_—distant memory of being very young and sitting on his father's lap during a celebration of something, and Shen had actually been _smiling_…but he'd always thought that was a fabrication, or wishful thinking, hoping for some semblance of paternal love at some point in his life. But after Ming Hua's passing, Shen hardly spoke to him. He hardly even looked at him. It was almost like he blamed Dalang for taking her away. But that wasn't it at all.

"Stupid…" he whispered to himself once it came to him. "I'm so stupid."

_You're so much like your mother_. It was the _way_ he said it…each time he said it… It was as if Shen was choking on those words. He couldn't explain it any other way. Now that he thought about it, Shen hardly ever looked Shang in the eye, either. It was their eyes. Ming's eyes.

_No, he tried to kill me. I disobeyed him, and he tried to have me killed…twice!_

He only looked him in the eye a handful of times since Ming Hua's death, and each time it was never for very long. No, he never gave a damn about him, or any of his sons. He didn't care. Did he ever care?

_Think of me what you will, I loved your mother, and still do._

Shen never looked Shang or Dalang in the eye, never, or at least not for very long. But he had always responded when someone commented on their unusual eye color: "_It's their mother; they have their mother's eyes."_ And it was always in such an odd tone, short, curt…but also adoring. If he did care about them as more than just potential soldiers, he had a funny way of showing it…

_Believe what you want, I did care. Perhaps not as much as I should have, after your mother passed, but care I did._

…but he still cared.

* * *

A/N: Soooo…yeah. Ok, quick word on the origins of Koshchei's name (I know, I took my own sweet time…). "Asmodei" is an alternate spelling of "Asmodeus", who, according to the lore I found, is the demon responsible for the Fall of Man (i.e., tempting Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit). A "_koshchei_" is a malevolent Russian spirit, somewhat related to a "_domovoi_", which was originally going to be my main villain's name…until I realized a _domovoi_ is more similar to the benign English "brownie". _Domovoi_ helped out around the household and were kind and compassionate as long as you behaved well and worked hard (some families treated their house _domovoi_ as part of the family and would leave treats and gifts for them), but if you were to move away without either informing the _domovoi_ that you were leaving, or without inviting him to come with you, he would either stay in that house and viciously murder anyone who tried to live in it, or would follow you to the ends of the earth to kill you for forgetting it. For the most part, though, _domovoi_ are lovely creatures :) "_Koshchei_" on the other hand…they're _much_ worse. Usually taking the form of skeletal old men, _koshchei_ could not be killed by any conventional means; his soul was kept separate from his body (usually hidden "safely" in an egg) and as long as his soul was safe, his body was safe. Only by destroying the egg could one destroy a _koshchei_.

As for what medicine Su Lin gave Dalang…your guess is as good as mine.

Happy Holidays!


	15. Chapter 15: Full Circle

I know, I know, it's been a while. I wasn't yet proud enough of this to put it up. I've got Chapter 16 on the way, so hopefully I can knock out this fic and finish it by the time the sequel premiers in May. Wish me luck!

Disclaimer: Kung Fu Panda belongs to Dreamworks Animation. All original characters belong to me, please don't use them without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 15: Full Circle

* * *

A month before the winter solstice, Lang's training had been progressing just as Koshchei had hoped. He had grown stronger, lean muscles now clearly covering his formerly string-bean frame, and his posture suggested a confidence he had never before exhibited. After Lan Duo had changed tactics, the lupine youth had responded well to the different kinds of training offered to him. Lan Duo, particularly, was impressed at Lang's speed and agility (likely honed through years of avoiding bullies at all costs), and utilized it whenever they practiced their pole arms exercises. In the two weeks after Lang had started learning to fight from a lone wolf's perspective, he had received untold number of tips and demonstrations in the various forms the Half Dozen were versed in.

Yu Wang and Tan Lan were both assassins, and each favored their own respective weapons: the knives, and throwing stars (with rope dart as back-up). Both wolves were 'scrawny' compared to the others, especially Bao Nu, but like Lang, they made up for it with speed and dexterity. Yu Wang, the thinner and taller of the two, taught him fool-proof ways to hide weapons on his person so that they wouldn't be detected until it was too late for the opponent to make a move. Tan Lan introduced mathematics to his lessons, though Lang had no idea how math would help his training...until _after _Tan Lan accurately calculated how much force was necessary to take down someone like Bao Nu. From Bao Nu, he learned more effective ways to build muscle, including altering his diet to include more protein than his little body could tolerate (at first); Lang spent the first couple days vomiting from ingesting too much, but Bao Nu continued to force feed him until his 'smallish-type' body could tolerate the added calories and, thus, became 'not-so-smallish type'. On the subject of diets, Xu Jiu - the fattest of the six, and of medium height - taught Lang his favored method of fighting, which resembled a simplistic style of kung fu known for its low stance, limited leg work, sweeping arm movements, and using the force of the opponent against them. Xu Jiu was the only wolf who actually bothered to joke with the youth and actually offer pointers without insult or provocation.

"It's...weird," Lang admitted to Koshchei later. "If I didn't know better, I'd say they actually _wanted _to help me."

"But they do not," Koshchei pointed out.

"Well, yeah, duh, that's why I said 'if I did _not _know better'," he quipped, and Koshchei chuckled.

"This is being true," the leopard admitted. "I have vorry, that you learn too much."

Lang warily stared at him; he may have trusted Koshchei, but even the wolf knew that comment could have carried many meanings. "How so?"

"Eh, is eh...vhat is saying? Too many crooks in kitchen?"

"Cooks. The saying is 'Too many cooks in the kitchen'."

"Vhateva...but that make more sense. Point I am trying to make, I am thinking you haff too many teacher."

"You're not worried that they're doing this to get back at me for something I did...whatever it was?"

The leopard shrugged off the concern. "Is not motivation, not so much. Volfs like that only after gold and treasure from Valley of Peace. Vhy they haff reason for revenge against smallish type, who do nothing to them? Only problem is..."

Lang finished after he had trailed off: "...The _blyadski mudak_, otherwise known as Zi Hao."

Koshchei gave him an impish grin that looked rather grotesque on his withered face. "_Da_." After a pause, he asked, "You neva tell me vhat you are planning to do vit him."

"Nothing."

The leopard was surprised. "_Nothing_? After vay he treat you, you not get back at him?"

Lang shrugged. "Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn't it? All I wanted was for him to stop picking on me, and, well, that's already happened, so what more do I want?"

"For him to suffer as you suffer," Koshchei pointed out.

Lang squirmed uncomfortably. "That's the problem, though. I suffered a lot, and I don't want anyone to suffer like that..."

"But Lang, think of vhat he put you through! You are not angry vit him?"

"Well, sure I am."

"So vhy do nothing?"

Lang fell silent. He had not yet told Koshchei about Duo's plan to completely humiliate and destroy Zi Hao's name, mostly because he wasn't sure what the old cat would think, but also mindful that the old cat didn't completely trust Duo, either. Lang wasn't sure he trusted Duo himself, but he felt that of all the wolves - still - Lan Duo was the least likely to stab him in the back. That had to count for something, right? And lately, Lang had gotten the feeling that Duo started to - if not outright care - at least tolerate him enough not to hit him.

"The time's not right," he finally said. "Every bully I've ever known has lured me into a false sense of security, got me to trust them, before they turned on me."

Koshchei had fallen noticeably silent, but Lang assumed it was because he was listening to him, like so few people had done before.

"I want to get Zi Hao to trust me before I get him. And I mean I really want to destroy him, here. He's done nothing but hurt me and, you're right, he needs to pay for it. He's not going to understand words, he only understands violence and beat downs and curses...but think how much worse it would be if he thought he could trust me, then I turned on him. Like my parents-" and here he stopped abruptly, swallowing hard and biting his lip. Koshchei now watched him very closely and waited for Lang to continue. "You're supposed to trust your parents, aren't you?" the youth asked. "If they abuse you, people who are supposed to love you...then who can you trust? Who would love you if your own family won't?"

"Oh, _Malchik_," Koshchei said softly, paternally placing his large hand on the youth's toned shoulder and pulling him into a one-armed hug, "I am no expert on family, but still I say, you forget them. They do nothing for you, so vhat do you owe them? Nothing. Life is too short to hold on to problem like this. And who need love? I do just fine vit-out it. Once you haff power, people vill love you. This I am sure."

Lang was not so convinced. Later that evening, after dinner, he worked on his flexibility with the Wu Sisters, who had volunteered (through Koshchei, of course) to help the youth learn proper stretching exercises. Jiang and Zhu had chopped down a young tree and set it up between two stumps, where they were stretching their legs and backs. Tian had Lang sitting on the ground with her, doing toe stretches, straddle exercises, and sit-ups. Currently, she held his feet down and counted off each sit-up. "...Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five...c'mon sweetie, you're so close..."

"It hurts to breathe," he gasped, hands clasped behind his head.

"Twenty-five more, honey, then we can stretch hamstrings and give you a break, okay? I know you can do it."

Spurred by this small encouragement, Lang grit his teeth and pushed himself through ten fast sit-ups, then started to slow down by the fifteenth. Now even Zhu and Jiang were cheering him on from the parallel bar they had set up. Taking deep breaths, he eased himself through the last ten, and when he finally reached the one hundredth sit-up, it took all his strength to listen to Tian: "One hundred! Now, ease yourself back down. Don't flop to the ground like a fish; lower yourself slowly..."

When he was finally laying down, his stomach burning from agonized overused muscles, the sisters smiled and congratulated him.

"Way to go, kid!" Jiang said.

Zhu knelt down and hugged him, "We're so proud of you, sweetie!"

Tian's smile faded when she saw the look cross his face, and tears start glistening in his eyes. She didn't speak up until she heard him sniff. "Lang, honey, are you all right?"

He pushed Zhu away and roughly wiped his eyes with his arm. "Yeah...yeah, I'm fine."

"Hon, if I pushed you too hard tonight, just tell me - I don't want you getting hurt."

"It's not that," he whispered.

"Then what is it?" she asked, her garnet eyes sparkling in the fading light. Lang looked back at her, then over at Jiang and Zhu, before he lowered his gaze and flattened his ears against his skull.

"That's the first time anyone ever told me they were proud of me."

Now Tian felt her own eyes tearing up. "Oh, sweetie..." She took a deep breath and blinked the tears away. "We know how that feels."

Lang glanced at her. "You do? How?"

"Mama was hard to please, too," Zhu explained.

"We never knew our old man," Jiang said with arms crossed over her thin chest. "He died when we were really little. It was just us and Mom."

"Nothing we did was ever good enough for Mother," Tian bitterly said, with a tone Lang knew all too well. "Did you know, before we became assassins, we were actually going into the arts and sciences? Zhu is an amazing acupuncturist-"

"License might've expired," Zhu cheerily said, "But I still got it!"

"And Jiang was a gifted healer; she got into the highest medical academy in the empire - the first woman ever to do so."

Jiang shrugged, inspecting her claws. "No regrets for not going - most of those other doctors were misogynistic pricks, anyway."

"What about you?" Lang asked Tian.

Tian wistfully smiled. "The opera. I've got a hell of a voice, or so I've been told. I was also told by others that I could sing and dance in the Imperial Opera for the Emperor himself." She stopped and sighed, then bitterly snapped, "But that wasn't good enough for her. What more did I have to do? I practiced singing until I lost my voice, played the zither until my fingers bled, and danced until I had broken every toe _at least twice_! I mean, would it have killed her to at least _say _she loved us, and that nothing would ever change that, instead of just criticizing everything we did?"

Zhu quickly stepped in before her sister's rant could get worse. "There aren't a lot of options open for women, you know. We had to become assassins out of necessity. You think anyone would accept a female doctor or acupuncturist? And if you don't know the right people, you're not getting into the Imperial opera."

"We were starving and, hell, we gotta eat, don't we?" Jiang asked. "Just because we're assassins doesn't make us heartless. We really try to kill only those who really deserve it. Our number one rule..."

"No children," Tian said. "We will never harm a child."

"Did you ever think your mom didn't love you?" Lang asked after a pregnant pause.

"Many times," Tian admitted. "In some way, I guess she was bitter she only ever had daughters." She paused. "You don't think that about your parents, do you?"

"Why shouldn't I?" he suddenly snapped. "These were people who were supposed to love me, and they hit me and ignored me as much as White Wolf did. If your own family doesn't love you, who will?"

"_Someone_ will," Zhu said with a hopeful smile. "No one goes through life completely unloved."

Lang sighed and pulled his knees up to his chest. He didn't say it, but each sister knew what he really wanted to say. Jiang spoke first, "No matter how bad they treated you, don't lower yourself to their level. The best revenge is living well."

"That doesn't seem good enough," he said.

"Then lets pump you up so you can live _really _well, and _really _stick it to them," Jiang smirked. She offered him her hand to help him up. When he accepted with a small smile, she yanked him up to his feet. "You're already on the right track, kid."

"I still need to prove myself," he said as he began the hamstring exercises, led by Zhu. "And I can't do that until we take the Valley."

"Eh, say what you want," Tian said with a shrug, arching back into a graceful back bend to stretch her spine. "I think you've proven yourself."

"Not yet, I haven't. I gotta prove myself to Duo, and to Asmodei. Duo said he wants me to kill a kung fu master, any kung fu master, and that'll be my final exam." He grunted as he eased himself up from a deep lunge. "Still have to figure out which one, though."

"You could do us a huge favor and take out Master Tigress," Zhu said cheekily.

"No, she's off limits," Tian growled. "I want that bitch's blood. We've got a history, she and I."

"So I'd better not ask?" Lang questioned.

"You're better off not asking," Zhu agreed.

"I'm gonna go fill up our canteens," Jiang suddenly announced. "You guys need anything?"

"Painkillers for pulled muscles would be good."

Jiang scowled at Lang. "Nuh-uh, I might be an assassin but I was a physician first: that's enough painkillers for _you_, young man."

"Suck it up, babe," Zhu grinned. "No pain, no gain."

"I'm beginning to question the validity of that saying."

"You're questioning it _now_, after a month of Duo's tutelage?"

"Shut up," he sullenly retorted.

Jiang rolled her eyes and stalked back towards the camp. The fires were low to prevent them from drawing too much attention from the locals. She was getting nervous; they were no longer in Gansu, and were closer to Hunan and the more populated cities and towns than she was comfortable with. When it was just her and her sisters, she didn't mind the large populations, as it was easier to hide in a massive crowd. But as they traveled south, word of Koshchei's return to China and the promise of plunder lured many nefarious evil-doers to their cause. Their horde now numbered at least fifty thousand, and more were joining every day. Jiang had never seen an army this size outside of the Imperial guards. Yet strangely, she'd probably feel safer if she'd been amongst the guards than amongst the multitude of baddies she found herself surrounded with.

As she passed by one ancient pine, she slowed in her step. "I hope you caught all that."

"Yeah, unfortunately."

Jiang glanced down at Lan Duo who, as Lang's personal coach, obsessively kept mental logs of the youth's progress. The grey wolf had crouched behind the tree trunk, his footfalls cushioned by dead needles and his shape veiled by the low-hanging branches. He stood and wrapped his cloak closer around his body. "So...the first time anyone said they were proud of him, huh?"

"Sounds like it."

"Shit. I knew I had my work cut out for me, but I never thought it would be this bad."

Jiang waited until he fell in step next to her. They conversed in low tones as they walked back to the camp. "Does this hurt your plan at all?"

"Bruises it, but its not a deal-breaker." Duo sighed through his nose. "He's definitely gotten better. I can tell he takes to the _pudao _and spear as a bird to the sky. He's a lot more talented than I thought."

"He picked up the throwing knives pretty well."

"Yeah, that surprised me, too." He fell silent as they reached the camp. The Half dozen still more or less stuck together, evidenced by the four other wolves sitting around a small fire. Zi Hao sat off to the side, alone, per lupine traditions. Yu Wang was sharpening his throwing knives on a whetting stone while Xu Jiu and Bao Nu shared some _congee _from the boiling pot over the fire. "Where's Tan Lan?" Duo asked.

Yu Wang looked over his shoulder then shrugged. "No clue. He said he had some business to take care of."

"Business?" Duo asked, not bothering to hide his suspicion.

Yu Wang sent him a glare. "Give him some slack - he's our accountant, alright?"

"How long has he been gone?" Jiang asked.

Yu Wang stared at her, then slowly said as it dawned on him, "At least an hour before you took Lang for training..."

The other wolves snapped their heads up, ears erect. Duo shared the same look with Wang, who pocketed his knives. Years spent as assassins, thieves, cutthroats and outlaws had honed their instincts towards such acute paranoia that anything - including prolonged absence by one considered an ally - was suspicious. "Something's wrong."

"He's been gone too long," Duo agreed. "Did he go alone?"

"I offered to come with him," Bao Nu said. "He said this was something he needed to do alone."

"We're not far from an army station," Jiang pointed out, chilling their blood even further. "Maybe an hour's walk..."

Zi Hao finally said what everyone was thinking: "The son of a bitch is selling us out."

"But he wouldn't do that," Xu Jiu said. "...Would he?"

Duo answered the fat wolf's question for all of them. He grabbed Jiang's arm and told her, "Get Koshchei and tell him what's going on. I'm going back for Lang and your sisters. Go!"

"Uh, too late," Xu Jiu said, pointing behind Duo. When the gray wolf turned, he came face-to-face with Tan Lan, who was - surprisingly - scrambling to get away from Lang. Duo saw why: even without the firelight, Lang's eyes were burning with hellish fury. The youth had something in his hand, and he threw it to the ground. The leather bag opened as it landed, spilling gold coins into the dirt.

"You sold us out for _fifty gold pieces_?" Lang snarled. "Is that all we're worth to you?"

Tan Lan knew he was in trouble. He didn't yet fear Lang, but he knew his brethren would turn on him with the damning evidence right by his claw. And not even the Wu Sisters, who came in behind Lang, could do anything - or _would _do anything - to help him. So the short tan wolf smirked and picked himself up. "Its all in the numbers, kid. Koshchei promised us payment, and he has yet to deliver. Meanwhile, the ransom on _his _head is more than enough for me to retire comfortably."

"And what about _our _heads?" Lang snapped. He pointed at the wolves standing by the fire. "Are _we _only worth fifty pieces of gold, together?"

"Compared to Koshchei, you're all small-time. Relax, your neck won't feel the noose."

Bao Nu looked absolutely furious, and ready to give in to his baser urge to wipe Tan Lan from the face of the earth, while Yu Wang had a white-knuckled grip on his knives. Zi Hao was too furious even to growl. Duo stared in dismay at the greedy tan wolf, his jaw moving, but his voice refusing to work. Lang, very unlike his character, spoke for all of them:

"You know what Koshchei's going to do to you when he finds out."

Tan Lan visibly paled, but whatever bravado he had left allowed him to snort contemptuously. "By now, his head's on a soldier's lance. I got fifty up front, but I get the rest of the reward after he's dead."

Lang slowly smirked. "You willing to bet your life on that?"

The tan wolf called his bluff. "Yeah, I am."

"Okay. Hey, Asmodei, how's it going?"

Tan Lan sucked in his last breath and turned to face his doom. That breath was knocked out of him when he felt the blade piercing his back. He staggered and would have fallen had Lang not wrapped his arm around the other wolf's chest to hold him up. As his vision grew increasingly darker, he felt something hot and wet pouring down his back, and heard Lang hissing in his ear:

"The punishment fits the crime, Lan. See you in hell."

With a parting curse, Lang shoved against Tan Lan's back, the tan wolf dead before he hit the ground. Tian and Zhu gasped in horror as the other wolves stared in shock. Lang had moved too fast for Duo to see, and too quickly for Yu Wang to realize the youth had snatched a knife right from his own hand. Lang stared down at Tan Lan's body, panting heavily from the adrenaline rush, the knife in his hand still dripping hot blood. It almost didn't register right away. He felt the knife in his hand, the surge of energy, and was aware that Tan Lan was lying prone on the ground with a huge and growing dark red spot on his back. So it wasn't until Jiang returned with Koshchei in tow that Lang suddenly realized what he'd done.

"_Malchik_," Koshchei said, so softly that it shocked everyone present by its tenderness. "Vhat happen?"

Lang's eyes flicked up to the leopard's, then down at the dead wolf, before he gave his answer. "I think it's pretty obvious what happened."

Koshchei surveyed the scene, missing nothing, especially the bag of money. "How much?"

"Fifty gold pieces," Lang answered, with an authoritative tone he had never used, sounding for foreign to his ears, and yet...it sounded _right_. "The army should be mobilizing and on their way to apprehend or kill us. We need to leave, now."

"_Nyet_," Koshchei said. "Ve stay and fight."

"Are you _insane_?" Wu Tian exclaimed.

"Ve haff superior number," he argued.

"Yes, a number of rag-tag undisciplined miscreants," she countered. "This is the Imperial Army we're talking about!"

Lang knew - he just _knew _- that staying put would end their plans before they had begun. He wasn't prepared to die in battle, be executed, or waste away in prison. He had too much to accomplish, too much to do before the first day of winter. So he thought. He thought quickly, running scenarios over in his head. He was not the most literate, and perhaps lacked some semblance of common sense, but his time around Koshchei - one more animal than man - had kicked Lang's animal instincts into high gear.

"Damnit, Asmodei, I said NO!" he suddenly snapped, shocking the Amur leopard and the female assassin out of their argument. He continued, holding the bloody knife with a white-knuckled grip, "We may have superior numbers but we are _not _a unified force! We don't have the training, we don't have the resources...if we stay, we're dead. We need to leave, _now_! If we stay and fight, the army will tip off the Jade Palace and our plan is fucked. I don't care what fucking experience you have or how much you want to kill somebody; it's not happening tonight. Save it for Jiao Dalang."

"I hate to agree," Lan Duo spoke up, "But Koshchei may have a point. Lang, this is a huge force – fifty thousand is nothing to sneeze at - and even if we decided to run with our tails tucked, it would take too long to mobilize."

"Then we abandon anything unnecessary," Lang said. "The tents, we can do without. Extra pots and pans. Only what we can carry, the bare minimum. Anyone who doesn't like that can stay here. Once we get to the Valley, there'll be shelter and food and other supplies."

Duo pleaded for sanity, "Lang, listen to me: we are not ready for an invasion! And the Thread of Hope can't handle an army this size crossing it! Either way, we'll have to fight _sometime_..."

Lang suddenly smiled, then his lips curled back into an appropriately wolfish grin. "I know. But not at the _same _time."

Duo, the other wolves, the Wu Sisters, and even Koshchei, stared in confusion at him. Lang sighed theatrically and swept his arm out to indicate the horde. "Okay guys, really? _None _of you have figured it out? We break the horde into smaller groups and flee, scatter in different directions so the army doesn't know who to follow. Yu Wang," he said, pointed at the thin assassin, "You can take one group of ten thousand, lead them in a roundabout to the Thread of Hope, through Guanxu. Bao Nu, Xu Jiu, Zi Hao, the Wu sisters, each of you can captain your own sections of the horde while Koshchei leads the main force. Take your groups and get the fuck out. If Koshchei and his team want to stay and risk their asses, let them. But I'm not going to risk the Big Plan for a _stupid _plan like that!"

Stunned, the group just stared back at him. A few of them then frowned, individually wondering why they hadn't thought of that first. Then Koshchei poked Duo's shoulder and asked, "Vhen _you _teach strategy?"

Duo glanced between Lang, the leopard, then back again before answering honestly, "I didn't."

Lang, by now very irritated that they were running on limited time, snapped, "Well? What the fuck are you all staring at me for? Get going!"

"Who should take what?" Xu Jiu asked.

"_Aiya_! Do I have to think of _everything_?" Lang snarled. He pointed at Xu Jiu, "You, take the ten thousand camped along the water, move through western edge of the pine forest, then turn around and head south once you reach the border to the next province. Bao Nu, you take another ten thousand, ones used to high elevations, and stick to the mountains; that's where your strength lies, so use it. Go east then come back down south through the mountains; the army won't be likely to follow you through there. Zi Hao-"

Zi Hao, now the omega of the pack, was both shocked and suspicious when Lang turned to him, but was further surprised when Lang said, "I can trust you to mobilize anyone I put you in control of, I don't care what methods you use. I'm giving you a choice: you can either be the ten thousand that stay behind and fight off the Imperial army, or you can be the primary offensive scouting expedition. You will be the first to the Valley of Peace and can get intelligence for the rest of the invasion."

The black wolf stared the smaller one down, as if trying to guess his intentions, then replied, "I'll stay."

"Good. Take the northerners; their fighting styles aren't what the Chinese are used to, you'll have the advantage of surprise. Duo," he turned to his teacher, "I'm putting you in charge of-"

"The _fuck _you are," Duo snapped. "I'm stickin' close to you, your training's not done yet, pup."

Lang sighed. "Fine. Tian, Jiang, and Zhu, you three head off the last ten thousand. Scout ahead and get intelligence on the Valley and its villages. Learn what you can about the Thread of Hope. We'll meet someplace close to the Thread of Hope, but far enough away to keep the army from noticing-"

"The Xiao-Tou Inn," Zhu quickly piped up. "It sits in the middle of this lake..."

"Compass Lake," Bao Nu said. "I know it. Wang, you've been near there, the Fukien prefecture."

Yu Wang nodded, quickly agreeing, "Yes, I know where that is."

Xu Jiu nodded, "I grew up near there, and I think I know the place you're talking about."

"Last question," Yu Wang asked, "How long do we have?"

Lang bit his lip and looked to Koshchei. The leopard only shrugged his shoulders. "I haff never been so far south."

"We have," Wu Tian said, and quickly gave directions to the suddenly appointed 'captains' to the location. "Each of us can make it there in ten days. If any of you are late..."

Lang finished for her, "If any of you are late, we assume the worst and carry out the plan on schedule, no matter what. Any questions? No? Good, lets go." But before Zi Hao could stalk off to claim his section of the horde, Lang stopped him and whispered in his ear, "Wait a second, I just thought of something. When you get your men together, disappear into the trees, wait for the army to get into the camp and surround them. Douse your fires. Make them think there's fewer than there are."

Hao stopped and took a moment to stare at the younger gray before he said, "Okay, where the hell did you learn all this?"

Lang's answer floored him: "From you. You used tactics like this whenever you bullied me." The youth offered a small, wry smile. "Who knew, that you were a better teacher than you thought?"

When Zi Hao walked away, Lang swore he saw a smile tugging at the dark wolf's lips. And Lang continued smiling, warmly, full of hope. When he turned to face his two teachers, Koshchei and Duo, leopard and wolf just stared at him, floored by what they had just seen.

Koshchei was the first to speak, "My Chinese is, eh, not so good, but, eh...vhat is saying..." he asked, looking to Duo for help.

Duo spoke for both of them: "Where the _fuck _did that come from?"

Lang looked between the two of them. "Uh...you mean killing Tan Lan?"

Duo and Koshchei shared the same long-suffering look before Duo said, "Yeah, sure, killing Tan Lan."

"He betrayed us. He had to pay. That's what you guys taught me."

"_Da_, ve did teach, yes?" Koshchei said, finally studying the corpse. "Is not bad for first kill. How you feel?"

Lang took in a deep breath then slowly let it out. "You know...I thought I should feel awful, but...it's not so bad."

"It looked pretty clean," Duo nodded. "But, now you have another lesson to learn. Which is...?"

"...How to dispose of the body?"

"Boom. You want to handle this, or shall I?" Duo asked Koshchei.

The leopard, evidently touched that Duo considered him, freely accepted. "But of course I handle!" He gave Duo some extra instructions for mobilizing the troops before setting down with Lang to discuss the finer points of disposing a body. After listing some of his preferred methods, he recommended, in this case, to leave the traitorous greedy son of a bitch to lie where he was. But, in a move that surprised the leopard, Lang asked, "What do they look like on the inside?"

"Vhat you are meaning?"

"Like, y'know, _inside_. What does a wolf's body look like on the inside? When you disemboweled White Wolf, I saw a bunch of long...things."

"It vas intestine. Intestine very, very long."

"I thought the stomach was in that area?"

"_Nyet_, intestine."

"So where is the stomach?"

Koshchei finally saw what Lang was intending to say and cruelly grinned. "_Vell_ naow, Lang, you surprise me! Did not think you haff stomach for it. Very vell. Cut line from each this one's shoulders, reach point in middle of chest, then single line doawn..."

It wouldn't be until much later, as Duo was coming back to see what was taking his illustrious leader and student so long to meet with the group, that he came upon the most gruesome sight he had ever seen. Tan Lan's corpse was serving one last purpose aside from being an example to any who crossed Koshchei and his newest protege. The evidence lay in his viscera, which were strewn out around his stiffening body and...

Duo quickly removed himself from the situation and stench of death, moving as far and as fast as he could before vomiting. This was going too far. Killing was one thing. But now Lang was doubly unclean. It was one thing to kill a man...but Buddhist and Taoist codes forbid the desecration of a corpse. For the rest of the evening, while they fled south, Duo was forced to listen to Lang's excited speeches concerning the things he didn't know about the body that he knew now.

"The stomach is actually higher up than we think, but we can't touch it because the water inside can actually burn you, isn't that weird? And there are all these veins around the heart: big ones, small ones - and I didn't know that hearts and lungs can actually turn black; soot or coal ash can do that if a person spends a lot of time around those things. Did you know that?"

Duo didn't know that. He didn't want to know that. He could end up getting ill twice more that evening, and he couldn't sleep for the images that kept coming back to the forefront of his mind. For the first time—truthfully—he was wondering what he had gotten himself into...and how far deep he was in.

* * *

Three days after leaving Tibet, the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior (and Little Brother) arrived in the village of Xiang Cun. Xiang Cun was, despite the name, a rather prosperous place to live, being right outside Kunming, the largest village – a veritable city – in Yunnan. Po at least had not expected it to be so large, or possess such population density. He was struck by the diaspora of foreign peoples, and the locals looked just as exotic as some of their neighbors from other nations. Quite a few of them, however, had the same look as his feline companion: all the males looked very strong and well-weathered, and the females looked just as stocky; even those slighter individuals had a "don't mess with me" vibe that Po _still_ got off of Tai Lung on his worse days. Tai Lung however looked like he felt out of place here.

The first thing they noticed when the reentered the Chinese empire was that it was Market Season for a good few villages, and they, naturally, travelled to the largest village in the prefecture to sell their wares. The stalls looked like they had existed there for centuries, though they had likely been hastily thrown up that morning at "O-dark ugly" as Po put it.

Little Brother, perched carefully on Tai Lung's shoulder, watched with wide eyes as they entered the village gates, the formerly lonely red panda now swamped by a sea of people. He had obviously been so far removed from high-traffic areas that such large crowds made him uncomfortable...which explained the painful grip he had on Tai Lung's fur.

"Ow," he winced, then tugged on Little Brother's red novice's robes. "Little Brother, you're going to have to ease up there, kiddo. I like having fur there."

The red panda pouted, then tugged on the strap of the snow leopard's rucksack.

"No, you cannot ride in the rucksack."

The red panda pouted further.

"Don't give me that look," Tai Lung scolded. "I may not be your official guardian, young man, but I'm not afraid to use discipline."

"You mean the same discipline you used when he gave you the sad cub eyes a couple days ago?" Po pointed out.

"That was different."

"Sure it was."

Tai Lung scowled.

Po smirked, "Lets face it: we both know Mei Xing's going to be the disciplinarian in your family."

"With my reputation being what it is?"

"Yup."

"Oh, you're so sure?"

"Yup. Your reputation with adults is different from your reputation with kids; kids aren't afraid of you. They know you'd never hurt them."

"Of course I wouldn't!"

"And there ya go," the panda said succinctly. "So, let's go ahead and find some food to eat; we're going to need enough to last two weeks, with three guys."

Tai Lung pointed to the red panda cub on his shoulder. "Po, how much do you think this little guy _eats_?"

"You'd be surprised how much kids can eat."

Tai Lung sighed, reaching to the money bag that hung around his neck that he had tucked inside his robe. He picked out a few coins, counting the difference in his head. "Alright then, lets find as many non-perishables as possible..."

As it turned out, the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior ended up getting most of their food for free. At first, they surmised it was because they still resembled monks (and for good measure, Po decided to take their red wool robes from the temple, as extra protection against the cold). The red robes, on top of the grey clothes they had worn from the Valley of Peace, and the wide-brimmed straw hats they still wore, would likely have given them room and board for a few nights, free of charge. But Tai Lung quickly discovered the real reason they were getting free food.

"It's the kid."

"What?" Po asked.

Tai Lung pointed to Little Brother, still perched safely on his broad shoulders. "It's him. The little old women here see him and immediately hand food to him. That's the second bean bun he's gone through, and the sugar cane stick came from that near-blind ox on the corner."

The little red panda was happily sucking on a piece of sugar cane, a broad smile on his round little face. Seeing an opportunity, the two warriors decided to accept whatever "donations" came their way...and having an adorable little "starving child monk" only helped matters (it also helped, of course, that Little Brother was skinnier than most children his age). Women of all ages fawned over the adorable cub, pinching his cheeks and giving him more treats, and, of course, food for his "loyal and observant guardians".

"Wow, people in Yunnan sure are friendly," Po said as they walked away from a stall selling medicinal herbs. "All I had to mention was that he had a stomachache and a cough, and they just handed over some herbs. I feel bad taking advantage of their kindness though..."

Tai Lung nudged him and whispered, "Don't worry, I left a few coins with him, to more than make up the difference."

Po sent him a look, "Have you been secretly paying people as we go?"

Tai Lung feigned an offended look. "Me? Now wherever did you get such an idea?"

They stopped suddenly when a scream cut through the air. Little Brother grabbed hold of Tai Lung's fur to keep from falling when the snow leopard and panda whirled around to find the source of the scream coming from a frantic teenage female snow leopard. She wore a red dress torn at the collar, tripping over the long hem, and tripped right into Po's arms.

"Whoa, hey there, are you okay?" he asked her. She didn't answer, only looking over her shoulder, shaking like a leaf in his arms. "Is someone chasing you?" Po asked her.

She turned back to him, grabbed the front of his red robes and begged, "Please, sir, get me out of here! He kidnapped me, he wants me to be his wife but he's already married my sister and he can't have me! Please, help me!"

Both she and Po were startled to hear the growl ripping from Tai Lung's throat. Quietly, he extracted Little Brother from his shoulders and placed him in the young female's arms. "Would you be a love and hold onto him for a bit? Thanks."

"Tai," Po said with a warning tone. "What are you doing?"

"Something I've wanted to do for the last two years," he hissed.

That was when Po put it all together. Largest village in Yunnan. Terrified young female snow leopard. Kidnap, likely forced marriage, attempted violation and assault, if her torn red dress and traumatized expression were any clue. And the look of hellish fury in Tai Lung's eyes that now burned with a phoenix's fire...

"Oh crap," he whispered, suddenly horrified. "No, wait—Tai, WAIT!"

He was too late. As soon as the Headman of the village pushed his way through the crowd, Tai Lung had sprung on him, wrapping his large paw around the fatter and shorter snow leopard's thick throat and lifting him high off the ground. All semblence of outrage left the Headman's face, which was starting to turn an alarming shade of blue...

"I thought that was you," Tai Lung said evenly. "Your stench preceeds you far more than your reputation." He ignored the Headman frantically clawing at the Phoenix Warrior's arm, his tubby body twitching and sharp, shrill gasps and disturbing gurgling sounds escaping his throat. Po took the opportunity to tap Tai Lung's shoulder:

"Okay, judging by the look of unholy fury in your eyes and the tight grip you got on his throat...this is Mei's ex, isn't it?"

"Yep," was the affirmative answer.

"Y'anno, I might be new to the whole revenge thing, but don't you think it'd be sweeter if he were alive long enough for you to gloat?"

Tai Lung thought about it, then shrugged, "Eh, good point," then he unceremoniously dropped the Headman onto the cobblestones. The shorter snow leopard coughed and sputtered just as his guards showed up behind him. They held back, not sure what to make of the situation. Tai Lung tore the wide-brimmed hat from his head and smirked, "Why hullo there. Remember me?"

As soon as the Headman recovered, he stared up in astonishment, then his face contorted into a grimace of rage as he stood. "YOU!"

"Me," Tai Lung said smugly. "Sublimely wonderful me."

"I should have killed you while I had the chance, you worthless peasant!" he shouted, then made the absolutely awful mistake of spitting into the Phoenix Warrior's face. To his credit, Tai Lung only cringed and used a corner of his red wool robes to wipe the spittle away.

"You okay?" Po said, gently pushing the female snow leopard behind him to keep her as far from the Headman as possible.

"Smashing. As in, I'm smashing in his face first chance I get."

"I've heard enough," the Headman barked. "GUARDS! Arrest these men, and throw that whore in with-"

"Wow, do _you_ have a complex," Tai Lung said. "So every woman that runs away from you or disagrees with you is a whore? No wonder Mei Xing left you."

Po hissed, but laughed, "Ew, _burn_..."

The Headman seethed. "That girl is legally bound to me. She was promised to me to bear my children-"

"Wow," Po said. "You've been married twice now and no kids? What's wrong with you?"

"It's those women! They were all sterile."

"Sterile, _right_..." Po said. He nudged Tai Lung's side. "How long did it take Mei Xing to conceive after you guys got married?"

"Three months? Maybe?" Tai Lung surmised. "I wouldn't know, I lost track..."

Suddenly the female snow leopard gasped, then spoke up: "You're married to my sister?"

The Warriors froze, shared an astonished look, then turned to the female. "Tian Mei Xing is your sister?" Po asked her.

Tai Lung hesitated, then asked, "You wouldn't happen to be Tian Fei, would you? You used to wear the green shawl your sister made you before she married out?" The girl nodded, holding Little Brother close to her chest; the red panda was similarly holding onto her, looking at the Headman and the soldiers very nervously. She looked surprised that he knew so much about her, but how could he not? Mei Xing was incredibly fond of her youngest sister, and spoke about her and her other siblings with a fondness she never used to discuss her parents. So Tai Lung knew quite a bit about Fei - "Crescent Moon" - than he mentioned.

Tai Lung was similarly astounded to have suddenly found extended family. He stared at her, matching her amazed look for another heartbeat. Then he turned to the Headman: "Her sister? Tian Mei Xing's younger sister?" his tone started out soft, then as the words left his mouth, they became laced with malice, then by the last word, with absolute rage: "You beat, rape and starve Mei Xing, and then you _dare_ to do the same to _her_ little sister and _my sister-in-law_?"

"Yes I do," the Headman said, evidently unfazed by the look in the other snow leopard's eye...he did have an army at his back; unfortunately for him, Tai Lung was a single army in one body. "I have absolute power here," the fat leopard bragged. "I am the richest man in Yunnan, and can do as I please. I need a son, and she-" he said, pointing at the youngest Tian daughter, "-is just what I need."

Tai Lung lashed out too quickly for Po to stop him again, but Tai Lung was not fast enough to stop the spear going right to his throat. It stopped just short of stabbing him, but it did nick his throat enough to draw a pinprick of blood.

For a moment, Tai Lung forgot to breathe. And so did the one wielding the spear at his throat. In that moment, the snow leopard and his rhino attacker froze, feeling chills neither had felt since that terrible, fateful day at Chorh-Gom Prison. It was unmistakable: Tai Lung knew those scars, those eyes; he knew exactly who he was looking at. And so did the rhino.

Tai Lung swallowed hard—not easy with the spear-point so close to his jugular—and choked out with as much aplomb as he could manage, "Hello Captain Altai, its been a while, hasn't it?"

The street was deathly silent, neither of its current inhabitants willing to make a sound, nor breathe. The first one to say anything was the only person who could not have been trusted to know when to keep his mouth shut in the first place.

"What the hell is going on?" the Headman demanded. "I hired you to follow my orders, and I demand you kill that spineless little—" He choked down the rest of his statement when the rhino leveled his glare and his spear at the shorter snow leopard's throat.

"Why don't you shut your hole, pint-size," the rhino rumbled, his voice low and deep like thunder rolling down from the mountains over a level plain. "You don't know who you're talking to."

"You? Please!" the old leopard harshly laughed, not realizing who the rhino was actually referring to. "You're washed up! Dishonorably discharged from the Anvil of Heaven—when I found you, you were so destitute, you were scrounging for food from garbage piles. I own you!"

"_Own_ him? Own _him_?" Tai Lung gaped, pointing at the rhino. "Are you out of your mind? _No one_ can own him! He's Captain Altai, _the_ Captain Altai, the Hero of the Mongolian Borderlands, himself!"

Po poked Tai Lung in the shoulder. "You know this guy?"

Tai Lung paused for a good moment, wondering how best to answer. Po still didn't know about his abuse…and he intended to keep it that way. "I should—he was one of my guards."

"Guards?" the Headman asked. "What's this about?"

The rhino, Altai, stared incredulously at the fat snow leopard. Then he pointed at Tai Lung, "…Do you mean to tell me you don't know who he is?"

"Are you saying a worthless peasant is someone I should know?" the Headman scoffed.

"Considering he's Tai Lung, yeah," was his matter-of-fact answer.

Still thinking it a joke, the Headman only chuckled. The laugh died in his throat when he looked about the street, at the two Warriors, at his intended bride holding the small red panda child, the townspeople (who had already pieced things together well enough to take a few paces back in an effort to avoid possible blood splatter), and even his own guards, suddenly noting the dead-serious expressions on all their faces. Whatever joviality was left in him evaporated immediately, and the sudden lack of self-confidence was replaced instead with cold-blooded fear, stuttering as he began to quake.

"W-wait…Tai Lung? As in…the greatest kung fu warrior that's _ever lived_, Tai Lung? The one who razed the Valley of Peace to the ground? The warrior who was so dangerous that they built a prison just to hold him and him _alone_? The Tai Lung that broke out of that prison and obliterated the entire Anvil of Heaven without breaking a sweat? The same Tai Lung who defeated Jiao Shen? _He's THAT Tai Lung_?"

"Yup." Captain Altai looked like he was enjoying himself far too much, and indeed far more than Tai Lung would have.

Tai Lung looked around the street, seeing faces pale all around. The young female snow leopard huddled further in behind Po's back, her eyes wide with fear now that she discovered her rescuer was not the saint she first thought he was. The Headman's other guards drew back in alarm, a few even giving up and running for their lives. The Headman visibly quaked…and Tai Lung finally smiled, straightening and stalking closer, like a predator to his prey.

The Headman laughed nervously, beads of cold sweat breaking out on his brow. "Eheh, um…about the 'peasant' comments…"

"Yes, I did want to say something about that," Tai Lung said, ominously cracking his knuckles. "But first, I have a little bit of news for you—Mei Xing is now my wife, which means that girl," he said, pointing at the teenager huddling behind the Dragon Warrior, "is my sister-in-law. She is coming with me, I am taking her back home to her parents, and you are going to stand aside and let us go freely; and there won't be any trouble…" by this point, they were nose-to-nose, and Tai Lung made sure to bare his fangs for the Headman to see. "_Right_?"

"Of c-c-course not!" the shorter snow leopard stammered.

"Good." He called to the girl, in a tone so gentle it was difficult to believe he had been threatening someone's life less than a minute before. "Fei, come along, love, we're taking you home."

Fei, still visibly shaking, slowly stepped forward, her eyes still fearful, and she shook so much that Little Brother was looking a little queasy. "Y-you're my brother-in-law?" she asked quietly.

"I am; your sister and I married a year ago." He held out his hand to her. "You don't have to come, but I can assure you that you _are_ free, and that I won't hurt you."

"You can trust us," Po said with a sincere smile. "We won't hurt you; we're good guys, see? Well, yeah, Tai's got a reputation, but he's really turned around! And I promise, you have my word as the Dragon Warrior – and I also swear on my dad's noodle shop – that you will get back to your family safely."

Fei still looked a little overwhelmed, but looking into Po's sweet, warm green eyes that smiled with the rest of his round face, she felt her fears slipping away as he took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze, much like how a protective older brother would treat her.

"My family," she said, looking quite relieved.

"Oh that's _right_, that reminds me," Tai Lung said congenially enough, then firmly grabbed the Headman by the throat, effortlessly lifting him two feet off the ground and slamming him against the nearest wall. "I am only going to say this once," he snarled at him. "And _only_ once: if you ever bother my in-laws again, I'll rip you into such tiny shreds that there won't be enough for your descendants to worship. Are we clear?"

The Headman gurgled out a quick affirmative answer and Tai Lung brusquely dropped him.

"Well," Tai Lung said, slapping dust off his palms. "Now that that is taken care of…shall we?"

"Let's," Po replied, gently guiding the girl to the village gate. Both warriors stopped dead when the Headman choked out his final order:

"Altai, aren't you going to do something?"

Tai Lung's eyes immediately flicked to Altai's direction, meeting his gaze. The rhino looked deep in thought, as if he were seriously contemplating it. Suddenly, he made his decision.

"Yeah, I'll do something. Something I should've done a long time ago," he said—almost cheerfully—to the Headman. "This is my two week's notice as of two weeks ago: I quit."

The Headman blustered. "Q-quit? You can't quit!"

Altai turned to glare at the Headman, smirked, then sent him a rather impolite hand gesture. "Watch me."

Tai Lung bit on his lip to hold back a laugh. He could tell from the rhino's expression that that had felt _very_ good. While the Headman stammered and stuttered with shock, the rhino threw down his weapon and marched towards the door.

"You boys don't mind if I walk you to the gates?"

"Not at all," Tai Lung smirked. "Rather like old times, isn't it?"

"That was only one time," the rhino reminded him.

He hesitated, as if questioning the logic of his saying it, then asked, "You know, we're staying at this inn, by the Silk and Tea road, then heading north to the Tian family farm. You're welcome to join us, seeing as you've probably got no where else..."

Altai paused as well, then warily replied, "Thanks, I think I will."

Po and Fei just watched the odd exchange, sharing confused expressions as they walked through the village's gate and into the dusty road outside. Po took off his warm outer robes to drape it over Fei's slight shoulders; she hugged it to her thin frame, offering Little Brother some warmth as well. The child continued to hug her, as if knowing she needed it.

Po and Tai Lung walked a few paces ahead of the rhino, and the panda waited until they were out of earshot. "Why'd you invite him? I thought you hated the Anvil of Heaven?" Po asked.

Tai Lung hushed him, looking over his shoulder at the rhino. He whispered to the panda, "I do…but I owe him a favor."

* * *

By the time they got to the inn, Fei had opened up considerably to the warriors who had saved her, Po especially. It wasn't until Po told Fei the whole story—how Tai Lung had met her sister, how they had courted and eventually married—that the young snow leopardess began to trust her newfound brother-in-law. Most of it had to do with how the story went: "Yes, that sounds like my sister. My mother swore she would never get married with that attitude of hers".

"Trust me," her brother-in-law assured her. "The stabbing was the worst of it, but it wasn't the only thing she did to me..." and thus did he tell her about all the slaps, punches, kicks, and even showed off the chipped tooth Mei Xing was responsible for (and though it was a pain at the time, Tai Lung couldn't help but feel proud of her for that).

Tai Lung, for his part, was willing to answer most of her questions regarding her sister and the Valley of Peace, as well as his own past…at least a little bit. Fei, who had, until now, never even left her family's home, was enamored with the stories, and seemed more excited for their adventure than they were. Hours after they had arrived at the inn, a well-fed and freshly bathed snow leopardess and tiny red panda lay asleep in their own room, something that Altai generously paid for from his own pocket.

This all made Po wonder. All he knew of this new situation was that, one, Altai was once an officer in the Anvil of Heaven; two, he had been dishonorably discharged; three, he had been one of Tai Lung's guards; and four, Tai Lung felt he owed him a favor. But as the panda lay awake that night, his curiosity became too much to bear. His thoughts raced as he tried to figure out how everything was connected.

After a good hour of tossing and turning, the panda finally sighed and got up, figuring a midnight snack might help him sleep. He pulled on his gray robe and made his way to the dining room, walking along the hall but stopped when he came to the stairwell. He heard voices coming from the dimly lit dining room, speaking in hushed tones. Curious, he carefully inched his way down, careful not to make a sound on the creaky steps; his training with Sun Bear helped tremendously. When he reached the foot of the stairs, he bolted, using the bar for cover as he listened in…and found that Tai Lung and Captain Altai were—amiably—catching up.

He heard Altai ask, "So…married now, huh? She hot?"

"Yes…gods yes," Tai Lung said, grinning like an idiot. Then he quickly recovered himself, "I mean… Ahem, yes, she is quite pleasing to the eye."

Altai smirked back. "Glad to hear it."

"You?"

"Widowed."

"Oh. Gods, I'm so sorry."

Altai shrugged. "She's better off in Heaven than she is here with me, where I can't even provide for myself let alone a wife, but enough about old wounds..."

Tai Lung nodded, adding, albeit a little hesitantly, "We're expecting, too."

Altai brightened up and grinned. "Oh! That's great, congratulations! How soon?"

"A month, by my reckoning."

"Jeez, you must be a wreck, being so far away from your…sorry, didn't realize that was a sore subject."

He shook his head, "I'm slowly getting used to it. So…what's this business about scrounging for food?"

Altai sighed, his broad shoulders heaving. "A lot of shit went down after I was discharged."

"But a _dis_honorable discharge?" the snow leopard asked, sounding genuinely confused. "What did you do that was so detestable?"

"I reported your abuse."

Po's eyes widened. Abuse? Well, he figured that his friend's stay in prison wasn't exactly pleasant, but torture? He listened closer, daring to peek around the corner to watch them.

Tai Lung looked sick. Po didn't know the whole story, but whatever ills had happened to this rhino, the panda saw that Tai Lung felt he had, in a roundabout way, been to blame for the captain's troubles. "…You reported it? But…you're so thorough; I expected something to be done…what happened?"

"Tai Lung, as soon as I found out what was happening, what Vachir was sanctioning as 'rehabilitation', I tried to stop it." Altai looked away, clenching his jaw. "I struggled to bring your abusers to justice for five years before Vachir got rid of me. Did you ever wonder why there was such a long break in between…?"

Tai answered in the affirmative, that he had, but he hadn't thought too much about it; that he was just grateful it wasn't happening. He let the rhino continue:

"When I found out what happened, I detained them, locked them up, and was going to report them. It was only then that I heard they'd been given the clearance to do it. I told him, Vachir, that what he was doing, what he was allowing to happen, was a stain on his reputation, the reputation of the Anvil of Heaven, and a dishonor to the empire, but he wouldn't listen, and told me to 'mind my rank'. So I decided to go over his head, take it up the ladder."

"You left," the snow leopard pointed out, sounding hurt and betrayed. "You left me there, and let them do it again. You have no idea how many times…"

"I know," he apologetically replied, looking forlorn and ashamed. "I had to leave; I had to go lodge a complaint in the capital. Vachir somehow caught wind of what I was doing, so when I got there, before I knew it, I was court marshaled for defying his orders." He shook his head, chuckling mirthlessly. "Court marshaled for doing the right thing, can you believe it?"

Tai Lung looked guilty. "So it's my fault, what happened to you."

Altai snorted. "Bull shit, you know as well as I do that none of this was your fault."

"You said you would try to help me…I remember that you came by, after…" he paused, visibly shuddering, "…after it happened, the first time, you cleaned me up, gave me a hot meal…that was probably the only time I was treated like a person while I was in there. The only thing I truly want to know is why you helped me."

What the rhino said next made Po see why Tai Lung held the old soldier to such a high esteem. Altai finally looked back at his former prisoner and quietly replied, "Why'd I do it? Because it was the right thing to do. If I just let it happen, everything I'd been taught, everything I was trained to do, would have been worthless. Believe what you want about the Anvil of Heaven—we were bred to be men of honor."

Tai Lung snorted contemptuously. "Looks like most of you missed your mark, because I can only name one man of honor from the lot of you, and he's sitting right in front of me."

Altai thinly smiled. "I'm honored you have such a high opinion of me. You seem to be the only one."

Tai Lung sighed, shaking his head, "If only I'd known about what happened to you after you left…I've got connections now, I can get you a better job—"

"I've made my peace," the rhino said, holding up a hand to stop him. "I decided that I didn't want to be a part of something that said one thing and did another. I couldn't live with myself if I worked with people whose ethics were worse than bandits. No matter what happened in the past ten years…or has it been fifteen? Anyway, no matter what happened, I have no regrets."

"I wish I could be so forgiving," the snow leopard said shortly, crossing his arms.

"Victims have a harder time, I think," the rhino said. "Forgiveness never comes easy, and putting it behind you is hard, real hard. But I learned it the hard way: holding a grudge takes more energy than just letting go. It's kinda like carrying a big rock on your shoulders; the longer you carry it, the harder it gets to keep moving. If you just let the rock go…"

"…the journey gets easier," the snow leopard finished.

Altai smiled. "Exactly." After another pause, the rhino exhaled heavily through his nostrils. "Does your friend know?"

Tai Lung shook his head. "It's not easy to talk about it. My wife knows, and so does my father. Not Shifu," he elaborated, "I found out a while ago, after defeating Jiao Shen, that my biological father was still alive. He…he had found Vachir alive after I escaped, and—Dad was an assassin, and, well…he was pretty good at his job. I'm sorry."

Altai shrugged. "Vachir knew he was in a dangerous business; assassinations are about as common to officers as building latrines are for the grunts."

"Just the same…"

"I understand, and you're both forgiven. Go on."

"Alright…But in any case…telling my family was hard enough. Po and I might be as close as brothers, but…I don't think I can tell him. I mean, what would he think of me?"

Po stubbornly thought, _Nothing changes, no matter what happened there!_

Altai shook his head, "If he's really your friend, he won't judge you. He seems like a pretty bright kid, and pretty understanding."

_Damn right!_ Po smiled with silent agreement.

"It's not that, its just…" the feline sighed. "I don't want his opinion of me to change."

"Mine didn't."

Tai Lung looked back and saw the rhino was perfectly serious. "Tai Lung, my opinion of you didn't change at all. Even after what you did, I still knew you were not a bad person, but you made bad choices. Most people can't see past that. After what happened in Chorh-Gom, my opinion didn't change. It takes a pretty big pair not to completely break down after the treatment you suffered. In fact, I think you're stronger now because of it. You survived it, and if you can survive something like that and still hold your head high...you're unbreakable."

Tai Lung sighed heavily, "I don't believe that. I suppose I just hide it well." When he finally trusted himself to look back at the rhino, he said, "You know, the way you're waxing philosophic here, about forgiveness and everything, I'd think you were training to be a monk."

"Nah, they'd never take me at a temple. I like swearing too much."

They shared a knowing chuckle, as if this was a long-running joke. The pause that came after gave Po a moment to think over what he had heard. So that was how Tai knew this guy! After he'd heard that the Anvil of Heaven had been cruel to him in prison, Po expected any surviving members to be as nasty as the snow leopard had indicated. So naturally, his first impression of Captain Altai was not kind. But if what he'd heard was true, if Altai actually had tried to stop the torture—whatever it was—from happening…that made him more honorable that the panda had originally thought.

Po's ears pricked up when he heard Tai Lung clear his throat and say, "Look, considering you're not employed anymore…why don't you come with us, Po and I?"

Altai arched a thick brow. "…Why?"

"Well, your discharge and most recent unemployment are my fault, and besides that…I owe you a great many favors. Sure, tell me I owe you nothing, but I'd feel better."

"Feel better that you're making up for something?"

"No, I'd feel better having an extra member of our party, for safety."

"Safety?" he asked incredulously. "Just where are you going? Who are you worried about?"

The snow leopard shrugged. "Hell if I know."

* * *

They left the next morning, and while the warriors rose bright and early to lay out their plans for the way home, they allowed the two minors to sleep longer. Tian Fei, Mei Xing's littlest sister, had been through a lot; the fact the girl was merely fourteen years old only added to Tai Lung's absolute hatred towards the Headman. It took quite a talking-down from Po – and threats of violent restraint from both Po _and_ Altai – before the snow leopard was calm enough to receive his sister-in-law and Little Brother down in the eating area for breakfast.

Altai paid for her meal – for all their meals that day – despite Tai Lung's insisting he needn't bother. Somewhat as a way to prevent himself from protesting further, Tai Lung got to know his sister-in-law better, and found that the fire that he loved about Mei Xing seemed to be inherent in the female family members. Fei may have been terrorized, but now that she was out of the worst of it, she showed such an anger to the Headman for not only kidnapping her and forcing her into a marriage with him, but for harming her sister, and his first wife, whom she was certain was murdered, despite what the old bastard said. There was such passion and vehemence in the girl's words that the adult males around that table were damn sure that if the Headman had actually done more than torn her dress, Fei would have done the one thing that Mei Xing had never dared to do: she would have put that son of a bitch into the ground.

"I'm quite certain of that," Tai Lung said later as they walked the narrow dirt road towards the Tian family farm. "She would have killed him."

Altai was doubtful, "Even knowing that doing so is an automatic death sentence for her? Besides, she's so little – what hope does she have against the likes of him?"

Tai Lung sent the rhino a look. "All right, now you're obligated: you _need_ to meet my wife. She's proof positive that you shouldn't underestimate small creatures."

"Don't forget Auntie Wu," Po said. "If anyone could prove that small creatures can pack a big punch, she's definitely one of them."

"What about Master Shifu?" Altai asked.

"Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?" the snow leopard warrior asked.

Altai smirked at Tai Lung. "He still scares the shit outta you, doesn't he?"

"Have you _met_ the man?" the snow leopard pressed.

"He makes a good point," Po said. "He might be little, but he's still plenty intimidating."

"What species is he?" Fei asked; all she knew about kung fu was what she had learned from her in-law.

"He's a red panda," Tai Lung answered, noticing Little Brother perking his ears up in interest. "And quite possibly the scariest master I've ever known."

"He's not that bad," Po said. "I mean, before your reformation, _you_ were a lot scarier."

"_Because I learned it all from him_," Tai Lung said with great emphasis.

Fei, looking a little nervous, turned to Altai, "I thought you said he was nice?"

"He is," the rhino assured her. "He's a perfectly nice guy. He's made some bad choices, killed a couple people, but then, I have, too. It comes with the territory." After a pause, Altai further assured her, "Tai Lung won't hurt you. If I know anything about him, I know he's a man of his word."

"You only knew me for five years," the Phoenix Warrior pointed out. "How can you be so certain?"

The rhino leveled him with a look. "You looked me right in the eye and told me you would break out of prison, even if it killed you."

"You know...at the time, I was blowing smoke."

"Don't matter: you said you'd do something, and you did it."

"That's not the best example I would give her."

"Best one I know," the rhino said with a shrug.

Po piped up, "Either way, he's not going to hurt you. You know how I know?"

"How?" Fei asked.

"Because if he was gonna hurt you, he woulda done it by now."

Tai Lung slapped a palm to his forehead and ran it down his face with a frustrated groan. "Oi...Fei, about how much farther is this place?"

The farm was not as far as they had thought, finding that they had made it to the smaller village of farmers by mid-afternoon that day. While the day had started sunny and warm, by the time they got to the fields, the sky had clouded over, and a chilly wind started sweeping across the valley. The steep hills – the only unarable land around – were dotted with precariously-hanging houses that jutted out from the cliffs, supported by flimsy-looking stilts. They continued to walk, with Fei leading the way, until they came upon the very outskirts of this village, far removed from the others, to a house sitting atop a small hill.

There before them stood what could only be described as a hovel, a tiny structure barely big enough to two people that looked ready to topple to the ground with the slightest gust of wind. Tai Lung had to stop and stare at the homestead, surrounded by dry, dusty earth and the rotted remains of failed crops. The barn was only slightly bigger than the family home, and held rusting and rotting plows, garden hoes, and shovels. Everything about this place told the story of a failed farm, and a failed family that had fallen far from grace. For there was evidence, based on the faded paint on the house's exterior walls, and the latticework in the windows, that this had once been an estate…sometime long, long ago. Certainly not within Mei Xing's lifetime.

"This…this is where you live?" he asked Fei.

The girl's face colored and she looked down at the earth in shame. She didn't need to say anything, nor offer an explanation. Suddenly, Mr. Tian selling his daughters made sense—it certainly didn't condone it, and Tai Lung would never, ever forgive the man for what he did—but in the face of such overwhelming poverty, how could anyone not fall prey to such intense desperation?

As they drew closer, none of them spoke. Though he didn't look back at them, he could tell Po and Altai were as stunned as he was. He chanced a look over to the panda, who looked back at him with a gaze of pure, concerned awe. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it, and yet both of them knew that this explained so much…

At the top of the hill, the old weather-beaten door swung open, revealing a short, alarmingly thin woman—unquestionably Mrs. Tian, Mei Xing's mother—whose face betrayed the harshness of her life, making her appear much older than she actually was. A thick yet tattered shawl was tied around her thin shoulders, her torn, ragged clothes her only protection from the chilling winds. The woman's eyes immediately settled on Fei, who cried out and ran the rest of the way into her mother's waiting arms. Mrs. Tian tightly hugged her daughter, grateful tears springing into her eyes.

"Fei-Fei, my little girl," she whispered. "Please tell me he didn't touch you, or so help me—"

"I'm fine, Mama, he never even got close," the girl said. She turned and pointed down the path at the four males waiting patiently. "These men saved me—and that man there is married to Mei Xing!"

The older woman looked between her daughter and new-found son-in-law with astonishment. "Is this true?" she asked Tai Lung. "Are you truly married to my eldest daughter?"

Tai Lung looked between Altai, Little Brother, and Po, the latter giving him an encouraging nod. He turned to his mother-in-law and replied, "I am."

Mrs. Tian narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. "Prove it."

"Well, madam," Tai Lung said honestly, "I certainly recognize that look on your face—Mei Xing uses it whenever she's cross at me."

"Not good enough," the old woman said, crossing her delicate arms. Despite her short stature and her frail, ghoul-like appearance, there was strength in the way she stood, and a look in her amber-gold eyes that Tai Lung remembered from the day he met his wife.

"All right," he said with a resigned sigh. "What proof do you need?"

"If you are really my daughter's husband," she said coolly, "You must know her favorite color, favorite food, favorite flower, favorite pastime, her best subject in school, and above all, the thing she desires most. You have thirty seconds."

He answered in quick succession: "Blue; fried prawn balls with sweet and sour sauce; plum blossoms; beating people at chess; arithmetic; and above all…" he recited and paused for emphasis, "The freedom to be her own person."

Fei and her mother shared a significant look. Then Mrs. Tian said to her, "He's good." She turned to him and nodded once. "All right, you pass. Why don't you and your fellows come inside?" she offered. "We don't have much, but we've never turned anyone away."

"Except your own daughter." Tai Lung bit his tongue, but the damage was already done. Mrs. Tian stared at him, completely stricken, and behind him, Tai Lung heard Altai groan and Po smack his palm to his forehead. Then he inwardly swore at himself; judging by how she was treated, and from what Mei Xing had said about her family, Mrs. Tian probably had little to no say in who her daughters married…those decisions were made by no one else but Mr. Tian, Mei Xing's father. Looking around the failed farm again, Tai Lung swiftly apologized.

"Please, forgive me—that was uncalled for. Madam, believe me, I am more angry at that bastard Mei Xing calls her first husband."

"Sir, you have no idea," the matron said with meaning. "And consider your apology accepted. Now, will you all come inside? My sons and daughters-in-law are out in the fields right now, and it's a bit cramped inside, but it's still better that keeping you out here in the cold."

"Is your husband also tending the fields?" Tai Lung asked, unable to hide the sharpness in his tone.

Mrs. Tian stared at him with an expression he couldn't quite place, but he noticed she had flinched when he mentioned her spouse. That didn't bode well at all. And it answered yet another question he had about his father-in-law. He had theorized that the only kind of man who would sell his daughters to known abusers would also be the kind to terrorize his own family.

"No," she said at last, "He is in the back garden, over on the next hill. Would you like to see him?"

Fei frantically tugged on her mother's arm, "Mama—"

"Hush," she said quickly. "Well?" she asked Tai Lung.

"Gladly," he said, his hackles rising. "I've a few words to exchange with him."

He felt a warm hand on his shoulder, and Po whispered in his ear, "Take it easy, bud. I know you're mad at him, but don't do anything illegal, okay?"

"Define 'illegal'…" he whispered back.

Po listed them: "Killing him, hitting him, threatening him…"

"So in other words, keep my mouth shut."

"Pretty much. Watch your temper, Tai," the panda warned. "We're guests here, remember?"

Tai Lung took a deep breath and followed Mrs. Tian as she led him around the side of the rickety old house. He noticed dead weeds growing along the sides, and hastily-patched holes plastered onto the outside walls that probably did little to actually keep the cold and wind out. He also noticed—to his shock and horror—a tiny wooden box, currently empty, but standing propped up against the exterior wall, waiting for its eternal contents. Mrs. Tian noticed where his gaze fell. "My youngest grandchild has been sick for a long time," she explained. "We're not expecting him to live much longer. It'll be a mercy for him, poor thing."

"What's wrong with him?" he asked as gently as he could.

"We don't know. He's always been weak, has no appetite, and often struggles to breathe. The healers can't do anything, diviners are no help at all, and we can't afford to get a real doctor out here."

"Is this how Mei Xing—"

"How she grew up? Yes…and if things had progressed the way we expected them to, she'd be married to a farmer as poor as we are," and here she paused, studying him with her eyes, as if trying to figure out his occupation from physique alone. The consternation on her expression told him she was completely in the dark…that, in her mind, he was muscular enough to be a farmer or soldier, but certainly not dressed like a peasant, nor did his manners (or lack thereof, in this case) suggest a rough upbringing. Tai Lung knew just from one look that he was, currently, a complete enigma to this poor woman. "He's over there," she pointed out to small shed-like structure that Tai Lung immediately recognized as a family shrine.

"Shall I interrupt him while he's praying to his ancestors?" he asked.

"There is very little that can bother him now."

Curious, and yet wary of what she had said, Tai Lung scaled the rest of the hill in a few short bounds and came to stop just to the side of a small pavilion that served as the family temple. Not surprisingly, it was kept in better condition than the family home.

"Mr. Tian?" he called. "Tian Dai, I need to speak—" But when he turned the corner, the small temple was empty. The only things staring back at him were ancestor tablets, headstones, and…

His jaw dropped in horror. "Oh no…"

At his feet lay a small, rather unobtrusive gravemarker, with the name "Tian Dai" engraved in the stone. Tai Lung stepped back and out of the temple, gaping at the stone. "Gods in Heaven…"

Mrs. Tian stood just off to the side, her arms crossed over her thin body in an effort to shield herself from the late autumn winds. "He's been gone since summer—his heart failed him while he was tending the fields."

"How…gods…" he was absolutely speechless. He had been prepared for anything: yelling, shouting, maybe a knock-down drag-out fight…but he never expected this. "I…I'm so sorry."

Somehow—a trait her daughter had inherited—Mrs. Tian seemed to know exactly what he had planned to do once confronting her late husband. "Judge my husband how you like," she said sharply, "But do not mistake _my_ intentions—I still love my daughter. Should she choose, she is still welcome here; I wasn't at all thrilled with whom my husband chose for her, but the man was rich, and Mei-Mei would never want for anything."

"Except someone who wouldn't beat her," Tai Lung said darkly. "Would it be a consolation for me to tell you I beat the snot out of him?"

She stopped, turned, and glared at him. "And invite his wrath upon us? How could you? He's already taken so much…"

"Trust me, after the 'chat' we had, he won't be bothering you again. If he ever does, let me know—I've no problem going back to prison."

"_Prison_? Sweet, merciful heaven…my daughter fled a perfectly respectable man and married a _convict_?"

Tai Lung clenched his fists, but that was as far as his temper got. "I've _never_ hurt her, which is more than I can say for a 'respectable man' like that Headman. I'd rather die than hurt Mei Xing. But…" he looked back at the gravestone and growled. "I can't forgive your husband for doing that to her—he _knew_ what kind of man the Headman was, and when Mei begged him to take her back, he ignored her. That bastard could have killed her, and your husband just sat back and did nothing!" He snarled savagely, making Mrs. Tian jump back in alarm. "I swear on my mother's grave, if I ever have a daughter, I would _never_ let that happen."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Tian asked. "Mei Xing never begged to come back home; after she got married, she stopped talking to us."

"Bollocks," he swore. "She sent letters, many of them! Each one telling you exactly what that man did to her! The rapes, the beatings—he starved her, worked her like a slave—"

The elder snow leopardess shook her head, overwhelmed by the allegations. "No…no, you're wrong. You're lying. The Headman may have a reputation, but he would never—"

"Don't you _dare_ call me a liar," Tai Lung growled. "I may be many things, but a liar is not one of them. Mei Xing showed me the scars herself. Those were not self-inflicted, they were not her fault and, if I understand it right, she did nothing to warrant the abuse she got."

"No, you _are_ a liar!" the older woman shouted. "If Mei Xing was being treated this way, my husband would have told me!"

"She sent letters—"

"We never received any!"

"When you say 'we', do you mean you, or your husband?"

That was when she very abruptly stopped, staring at him with a harsh, accusatory glare, but he could see that she had finally realized something that should have been obvious from the beginning. She suddenly shook her head. "No, no he would have shown them to me. He knew I wanted to keep in touch with my daughter, if any letters arrived, he would have…"

Tai Lung stared at the headstone of the Tian patriarch and fought back the growl. That was when it occurred to him…when many things occurred to him. Tian Dai had obviously lived a life of poverty, and had brought up a family—somehow—amidst the ruin of previous generations. The small headstone spoke volumes, now he stopped to think about it. In some way, though he tried to be a filial son (evidenced by how well the family temple, however small, was kept), he still, in some part, blamed his ancestors for the sorry lot life had dealt him. He had been born into a losing hand and died with a losing hand, as had his children…

Tai Lung looked over at Mrs. Tian. She had to be no older than he was…she was perhaps a young teenager when she was married to Mei Xing's father…but she looked almost older than Sonam was. Life had been brutally hard for her, and she likely hadn't spent much time in the fields…so how difficult had life been to Mr. Tian? Looking around at the desolate landscape, the Phoenix Warrior could only imagine the pain and heartache that the old leopard had gone through. How many times had he watched his children go hungry? How many family and friends had he lost over the years to disease, starvation or malnutrition?

The Headman had been a solution. A horrible solution, but for a desperate man, it was better than the alternative. When a daughter was married out, the family lost a worker…but perhaps the material gains from that marriage helped the Tian family in more ways than they had seen in generations. The headstones for the oldest relatives were in fine shape, clearly expensive in their day, but the newer headstones all looked of poorer quality…until Tian Dai's, which looked…well, it wasn't fancy, but it certainly looked better than his father's or grandfather's. Even as Mr. Tian had sent his daughter into the arms of a cruel, sadistic monster, he had made that sacrifice for the rest of his family. And no matter how much Mei Xing wished to go home, to be away from that bastard of a husband…Mr. Tian couldn't allow it. He couldn't go back on his word, couldn't give up the opportunity to save his family's lives…even if it meant losing one of his own.

"He didn't have any choice," Tai Lung finally said. "He didn't want her to marry a poor farmer, to have to worry about where to find food, money, or shelter. He wanted her to be well-off, to never have to worry about money, ever again. He thought marrying her to the richest man in the county would save her. That was why he did it, wasn't it?"

She sullenly nodded, wiping away angry tears with the back of her sooty arm. "Many men beat their wives—I was hit a few times during my marriage," Mrs. Tian said. "If that man had hit her once or twice, well, she still had the money, didn't she? She had the silks, the jewels, the gold, three hot meals every day…what more could she possibly need?"

"Love."

His answer surprised her, and yet he wasn't finished. "She needed love, and in ten years, she never got that. I know a lot of people look down upon a love match, as I'm sure your family would have," he said, softening his voice so that he was sure he got his message across. "But I love Mei Xing. I treasure her. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I couldn't ask for a better woman to call my wife. She is happy, and as long as she's happy, I'm happy."

Mrs. Tian looked back at her husband's grave and sighed, tears brimming in her eyes. "He would have been happy to hear that."

Tai Lung made a scoffing noise in the back of his throat.

"We _loved_ our daughter, sir," she said. "We only wanted what was best for her. We are peasants, and the Headman is our landlord. We are at his mercy, no matter where we are. If we leave, he will hunt us down and have us all thrown in prison. If we stay, he will continue to harass us, and we can't do anything about it."

"The hell you can't," he said. "As long as I'm married to Mei, he'll never come 'round again, if he knows what's good for him."

"And what power do you have over him?" she challenged. "Why should he fear you? Are you richer than he is? Do you have a higher position in the government?"

"No. I am a chef, and semi-retired kung fu warrior."

"Kung fu?" she asked; he saw she was slowly putting things together.

"Yes," he said, hoping to break it to her easily. "I was born in Gansu to warriors, orphaned, and raised in the Jade Palace, in the Valley of Peace, under Grand Master Oogway, and Master Shifu, the greatest kung fu teacher in China."

She drew back a little, but looked uncertain; he could tell she didn't want to believe what she suspected.

"I learned kung fu, strived to be the greatest warrior in history. When that title was denied to me, well…I lost it. I destroyed lives and spent time in prison for my crimes. I escaped, tried to take the title I craved by force, and was defeated. But I…bounced back, so to speak. In three years, I've turned my life around, from having no future at all, to having an untold number of possibilities."

"Sweet Kwan Yin…" she swore, raising her hand to her mouth in horror.

"I'm guessing you figured me out, then?" he said with a slightly wry smile.

"How in the gods' names could she leave one cruel man and marry a—a…"

"Murderer?" he offered. She paled considerably, and he feared she would faint. "Mrs. Tian, let me assure you that I mean no harm. I would not have come here to return your daughter if I were a true knave."

"Why in heaven's name would she marry _Tai Lung_?" she wondered aloud.

"Had you asked her that about two years ago, she'd be wondering the same thing," he confessed. "We didn't exactly get along at first."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, she stabbed me, once. Slapped me a couple times. Punched me hard enough to chip a tooth—see, it's right there…" he said, tugging at the corner of his mouth to point out the dental wound. "Then she kicked me in the stomach, kneed me in a, ah, rather uncomfortable place—but that last one was an accident. And I must say she has the most colorful language..."

"And after all that, she _married_ you?" she asked in utmost amazement.

"Well, I suppose I was asking for it, training her in kung fu and all…"

"Kung fu?" Mrs. Tian gasped. "My daughter is learning _kung fu_?"

He smiled proudly. "That she is, though not currently—it's a hobby of hers, but the doctors wouldn't let her—" he hesitated a moment, then asked, "Have you received any word from her, or about her, since she left her ex-husband?"

"No, but I can guess what you're going to tell me," she said, sounding hopeful. "She's pregnant, isn't she?"

"Eight months, by my reckoning."

"Is she healthy?"

He smiled. "So far, so good; I hope to be back before she gives birth."

"Does she think it's a son?"

"We don't know—we hope so." Yes, Tai Lung was well aware that women were just as capable as men in many respects…but he was still a product of his culture. He probably would have been fine with a daughter, but custom and culture dictated he needed a son to carry on his family's name. "But I know if I lost her, I'd lose it…again."

"All I heard was that she had a stillborn, and so many miscarriages…I was certain she would die. When I heard she ran away, I feared for her. When I heard the Headman had gone off to chase her, I knew he would kill her when he found her. Why are you smiling like that?"

Tai Lung, indeed, was smirking. "I'm guessing the word never got out that she beat the hell out of him when he eventually caught up to her?"

"Mei Xing…my daughter…beat up the Headman?"

"Can't say he didn't have it coming, but it was fun to watch."

She was speechless, but managed to sputter out, "C-clearly we have much to talk about."

"Oh, untold number of things."

"What shall I call you?"

He shrugged. "Tai Lung, though I also answer to Tai. My mother called me Tenzin. 'Son-in-law' is always a possibility."

"Will you still stay for dinner?"

"If the offer is still open after my horrid conduct, it would be rude to turn it down."

She nodded. "Of course; come, let's get you fed. Like I said, we don't have much, but we can still provide you something."

Well, whatever that "something" was, it smelled rather good. In fact, he sat down eagerly with his friends and in-laws, the latter of whom were all interested in learning more about their newly found family member. While the women quietly set the table, the men—Mei Xing's two brothers and her elderly uncle—chatted at length with Tai Lung and Po; Altai offered little to say about his former convict's activities during prison, but instead offered war stories of his own bygone days. While his in-laws discovered Tai Lung's past and his most recent activities, he discovered that he was an uncle to at least a dozen children, each one sadly skinnier than the last.

Mrs. Tian set a large pot on the table and called them over for food. Lifting the lid, a thick cloud of steam announced that dinner was most certainly ready. Mrs. Tian's eldest daughter-in-law raised a pair of tongs and began serving plates for her husband and the other men before serving the children. But the thing on Tai Lung's plate made him wonder…it looked like some sort of crustacean, but nothing like any crab he'd ever seen. Looking at his traveling companions, he found he wasn't the only one confused about their fare.

"Erm, Mrs. Tian? Forgive my ignorance, but I don't believe I've seen this dish before."

"It's an old family recipe," one of his brothers-in-law replied. "Pretty simple to make, right Mom?"

"Oh, I could make it in my sleep," she said, pouring tea while she waited for hers to cool. "It's just boiling it with some spices."

"Yes, but…what _is_ it, exactly?"

The entire Tian clan replied: "Mosquitoes."

The four travelers simultaneously pursed their lips and forced smiles. Except Little Brother who, for the first time since leaving the Phoenix Temple, looked like he was preferring the rice and tea right about then. They waited until the family picked up their meals—each insect the length of Tai Lung's forearm—and munched down into the still-crunchy blood-sucking creepy-crawlies.

"Mm," Altai hummed, certainly trying his level best to compliment the hostess, "Ma'am, I…can't say I've ever had mosquito before, but I'm sure it's as good as it smells."

The Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior both quickly nodded in agreement; Mrs. Tian smiled graciously and began eating her meal. Poking at his crispy critter, Po whispered to Tai Lung, "I thought Mei Xing was kidding about the size of mosquitoes here…"

Tai Lung chuckled without mirth as he stared down at his plate. "So was I, Po…so was I…"

* * *

Hours later, Po found himself unable to sleep. He knew Tai Lung wasn't in much better shape. He had noticed, all throughout dinner, how the snow leopard had looked upon his youngest nephew with worry, particularly how the baby struggled to breathe, let alone eat. The panda knew what was in his friend's heart, and what he wanted to do. What surprised him was why he hadn't yet done it.

Po sat up when Tai Lung did, and they turned to each other in the darkness of the one-room house. The rest of the Tian family slept huddled together against the cold. Altai was curled up in a corner, with Little Brother nestled in the rhino's burly arms. With a simple unspoken communication, the Dragon Warrior followed the Phoenix Warrior outside so they could talk.

"I know you want to help them," Po said. "I know you want to heal the kid."

"So why bring it up?" Tai Lung asked, hugging himself to fight off the sharp gust of wind that swept across the fields.

"Because I don't know why you haven't healed him yet."

Tai Lung sighed through his nose and looked out across the dying fields, now covered with hard frost. "Because I don't know if I'd be doing him a favor or not. Look at this place, Po. These people are starving, desperate. I could heal him tonight, but what's to stop him from starving to death? I know that what I have is a gift, but I don't know if it's something I should use all the time, or only sparingly. I don't know if there are limits to what I can do."

"So why not test the theory?" Po asked. "I know you want to help them."

"Of course I do. They're family now, aren't they? But even if I healed every last one of them...that won't change their situation. That won't make this farm produce food again. That won't make them prosperous, like they once were. It will only be a quick fix, and that's not what they need."

Po thought about this, then nudged his friend and said, "You can't save everyone, Tai. I know you want to – and I do, too – but we can't do that. We're not immortals, and we're not perfect, hard as we try. We have to accept that there are certain things we can't change. We can change what we can, but anything other than that, we have to leave up to the gods."

"The gods," Tai Lung said scathingly. "A load of tripe. When was the last time the gods did anything to help common man? Only time _we've_ ever had divine intervention is through our departed loved ones, and those don't count as gods, no matter how we worship them. They can only do so much."

Po thought about it, then said, "That's the thing though. If the gods did everything right, how are we to know if they're doing anything at all? Yeah, life is full of suffering. But for all the bad things that happen, sometimes good things happen too. _That's_ how we know. When good things happen in between bad things, thats how we know that there are people looking out for us."

"You'll forgive me if my faith is not as steadfast as yours," the snow leopard said dismally. "I appreciate the effort..."

"I know, this is something you need to find for yourself. I understand." Po sighed and started to head back into the house. "We'd better get some shut-eye. We need to leave bright and early tomorrow."

And so they did. Though the two warriors barely got anymore sleep that night, they were still wide awake come morning. In the gray twilight of dawn, beneath a sky that looked to threaten snow, Mrs. Tian saw them off; they declined any provisions she offered them. However, she left them with one bit of information that astonished them to hear:

"Your coming here must have been a good omen," Mrs. Tian said to her son-in-law. "Why, when my daughter-in-law woke up this morning, we found my youngest grandson stopped wheezing. In fact, he looks healthier than I've ever seen him. You must be blessed by the gods for this miracle to have happened."

Po and Tai Lung shared a look, and the former was surprised to find the latter was as perplexed as he was.

"How did you do it?" Po asked as they walked away.

"I didn't," the snow leopard replied, absolutely perplexed. "I swear I didn't do anything last night that could have helped the boy."

What they didn't know was that Tai Lung _had_ in fact helped him. Sort of. Without his knowledge. This, of course, was accomplished with the help of the only silent member of their group.

Little Brother had noticed how sick the baby was and, like a good little monk-in-training, felt great empathy for the boy. In the night, as he was huddled in the nice rhino's arms, Little Brother noticed that the baby – the nephew of Spotty-kitty (as the red panda novice had come to think of him before he knew his real name) – was very sick. He may have been a child, but Little Brother remembered what he had done the last time he was sick. The last time he felt really sick, all he had to do to feel better was let Tai Lung hug him. So, in his childish logic, he decided that was all the baby needed.

So, in the darkness, after making sure he did not wake Altai, he crept around the sleeping snow leopards, gently removed the baby from his cradle, then crept back to Spotty-kitty and safely put the baby in his arms, under his red robe, just as Tai Lung had done for Little Brother back at the monastery. Almost instantly, the baby had stopped wheezing, color had returned to his otherwise pale face, and most importantly, the baby smiled...carefully protected in Tai Lung's strong, comforting arms.

Feeling triumphant, Little Brother just as carefully returned the baby back to his cradle, the infant sleeping soundly for the first time in his short life. Then Little Brother himself returned to sleep...

...which was what he was still doing, as Altai carried him down the trail and onward to their next destination.

* * *

By nightfall that same day, they had made camp halfway up a mountain in central Yunnan. Po had told Altai what they were attempting to do, and as soon as the rhino was told their enemy's name, he jumped at the chance to help him.

"Before I was assigned to guard you," he said to Tai Lung, "I spent time fighting against the likes of him, and he was notorious even then. He's killed too many war buddies of mine. You can count on me."

"I knew I could," the snow leopard told him. "I never doubted that."

Po's next plan of action, however, surprised them.

"Why are we going to Chengdu?" Tai Lung asked him. "That takes us more than a few days out of our way."

"There's something I need to do there," was all Po said.

Altai, however, mentioned that, if in fact the pair were being hunted by not only the outlaws, but the military too, that Chengdu was a good option. "Staying off the beaten path will actually help you. Plus, you'll actually save time. There's a canal that runs from Chengdu right into Hunan. We'd make better time getting back to the Valley of Peace if we take the canal rather than go over land."

"You seem to know quite a bit about this," the snow leopard said, almost suspiciously.

Altai just shrugged. "After the discharge, I tried to avoid the army outposts as much as possible. Where you want to go, it's as far away from the army as you can get."

"Aren't there barracks in Chengdu?"

"Used to be. They closed down about ten years back, moved further west. Chengdu's more of a commercial hub now than a military outpost. We'll be safe there."

When they had made camp and were sitting around the fire eating their evening meal, Po suddenly spoke up. He had been deep in thought all day, and Tai Lung suspected the panda was either preoccupied by the prospect of going up against Koshchei, the issue with Mei Xing's family, and most likely the battles that were to come. Instead, the panda had this to say:

"You know…I've been thinking about something," Po said. He looked at his companions and continued, "What if we're wrong about where babies come from?"

"Hoo boy," Altai muttered. "Here we go…"

"No, hear me out! See, this is what I was thinking…Tai, you said Mei only ever had a stillborn daughter and a bunch of miscarriages while she was married to the Headman, right?"

"Right."

"Okay, and it took them four years from the time they got married to the time she actually got pregnant the first time."

"What's your point?"

"You two were married for less than three months before you found out you were expecting. How do you explain the drastic difference between…?"

Tai Lung snorted. "Her ex treated her horribly, but I make sure she's well taken care of. Her body just wasn't strong enough back then, but it is now. That's how she got pregnant so fast."

"No, Tai, listen…what if it's not the woman at all?"

Tai Lung, Altai, and Little Brother all looked at him now in rapt interest…and confusion. "Come again?" Altai asked.

"Okay, this happened when I was a kid," Po explained. "There was this guy who married a really, really hot lady, right? But after, like, five years and no kids at all, he divorced her and took another wife because he said she was barren. The first wife remarried, and almost a year later, bam, twins. And after that…she ended up having lots of kids, while her first husband only had one kid…"

"Where are you going with this?" the snow leopard asked.

"I'm just saying…" Po said, "Guys blame the girls if a baby is a girl…but what if the woman doesn't have any choice in that? Like, um…" he wracked his brains to think of a good analogy. When it hit him, he wondered why on earth it hadn't occurred to him sooner. "Okay, so you plant a peach pit in the ground, right? What does it grow into?"

"A peach tree," Altai said with strained patience.

"Exactly!" Po said. "You might wish for an apple or an orange, but you get a peach! So kinda like when a guy, uh…" he blushed, hemming and hawing mostly from his own embarrassment about the subject (but also mindful that there was a child present), "'plants' his, um, 'seed' in a girl's, um, 'earth'…she can wish for whatever, uh, 'fruit tree' she wants, but she's only going to get the tree that was planted, not the one she wants. Get it?"

"Alright, one, you are far too obsessed with food," Tai Lung said. "But as we were both largely starved for a month, I don't blame you. And two…let me see if I have this right…" he set his bowl down and rested his hands on his knees. "You think that the woman, who carries and gives life to a baby, does not determine a baby's gender? That the man determines the gender?"

"Not the man specifically, just the man's, uh, 'seed'."

"So what you're saying," Altai said. "Is that…it's not the woman's fault if it's a girl? That it's…the man's fault?"

"Exactly!" Po smiled. "Yeah; the 'farmer'—in this case, the dad-to-be—'plants' the seed in the uh…well, you get it…so he chooses which seed to plant. He might not know what kind of seed he's planting, but he's the one who planted it! I mean, it's not like the earth can grow stuff if the stuff isn't planted, and its not like a girl can get pregnant without a guy's, um, seeds, right?"

"So what you're really saying is…" Tai Lung paused, "That women are just the incubator, not the ultimate creator, and that men who blame women for bearing only daughters are just insecure little sods because in the end its actually _their_ fault not their wives'?"

"Exactly!" Po said, glad that they understood his point.

Rhino, red panda, and snow leopard stared blankly back at him before they—one by one—started laughing. Altai hunched over, clutching his side as he loudly guffawed; Little Brother giggled and rolled on the ground; Tai Lung was almost too breathless to exclaim, "That…that has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard! The _man_ determining a baby's gender! Ha!"

Po pouted and stubbornly crossed his arms. "Say what you want; I know I'm on to something here…"

"Oh no, Dragon Warrior," Altai said, slowly gaining control over his laughter, "No, please, tell us more of your wisdom…like where the sun actually goes after it sets at night."

"It doesn't go anywhere. The earth is actually round like a ball, not flat like a table. It's like a pendulum that rotates around the sun—the sun stays in place while the earth circles around it and rotates on an angled axis at the same time. So really the sun doesn't move at all, it's the earth that moves, and the distance of the earth from the sun and the angle of the earth's axis determines the seasons, and the number of rotations the earth makes on its axis determines the number of days in a year. It's the earth's proximity to the sun that determines all that, not the gods."

The other three males stared, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, and horrified. Had the panda actually just blasphemed?

They soon got their answer…when Po burst out laughing himself. "You guys make it so easy!"

Tai Lung snorted. "It's official: you have been spending far too much time with me."

"Not that that's a bad thing, right?" Po asked.

"You're starting to swear more than I am."

"Damn," Altai winced. "I didn't think that was possible. What?" he asked, both at Tai Lung's humorless expression, and also at Little Brother tugging on his sleeve. The red panda held out his tiny little hand and pouted up at the rhino...who started to feel rather guilty. "Um..."

"Oh," Po said. "You owe him five _jiao_."

"What?"

"Five _jiao_," Tai Lung clarified. "Where he's from, every curse word has a price attached to it. They had swear jars. No, I'm not kidding. And he's probably not going to let up until you give him the money."

Altai stared between the snow leopard and the red panda. "A swear jar."

Little Brother nodded.

"Seriously."

He nodded again, raising his hand higher to accept the coins.

The rhino sighed and reached for his money bag. "Why do I get the feeling I'm gonna go broke on this trip?"

"Probably because you will. I know my funds took a serious hit," Tai Lung said. But with a fond smile – one of rememberance, Po believed – the snow leopard said, "But it was worth it."

Altai stared incredulously at his former inmate, then pressed his hand against his forehead. Tai Lung growled, "I am _not_ sick!"

"They you gotta be delirious because I swore those words would never escape your mouth. They didn't feed you a lot where you were, did you? Which reminds me...you never did say where you were exactly."

Tai Lung paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth. He glanced over at Po, then said, "We were on a pilgrimage. Are on a pilgrimage," he corrected. And once more looking at Po, the snow leopard – though unable to read his friend's mind – felt that what he said next was also the truth: "And Chengdu is the next stop."

* * *

Okay, a few ending notes here:

There's a long-standing joke in my Mom's family—originally from Michigan—that the State Bird is the mosquito, and its large enough to have as a Thanksgiving turkey. Since a large part of Yunnan is sub-tropical, I thought it would be fun to poke at an old family gag. Michigan mosquitoes aren't big enough to make meals out of, of course, but they are big suckers. Literally. To my knowledge, there isn't any dish in Yunnan that incorporates mosquitoes, and no offense is intended.

Also, Mei Xing's father's name, "Dai" means "cloudy sky". It goes along with my whole premise that the "Tian (Heaven/Sky)" family have celestial names. Fei, of course, means "Crescent Moon", and Mei Xing means "Beautiful Star".

And it should be obvious by now that I love writing scenes with Little Brother in them. I got the perfect picture of him in my mind, and gawd is he cute. Having babysat two little boys for a family from my old church for a few years, I have plenty of material to work with; while I am no parent, I hope my writing little children comes off believably and successfully.

As for Po's theory...yes, this is my jab at the long-held belief that it was the woman's fault if a child wasn't born a boy. Science and genetics have actually determined that it is the man who "decides" the gender of the offspring, because only the male has the Y chromosome; women have two XX chromosomes, while men have XY. See kids, it pays to pay attention in Biology 101. And Po's heliocentric theory is a jab at the pre-Copernican belief that the Earth was the center of the universe/solar system (Thank you high school Astronomy class!); I'm not sure if the Ancient Chinese shared this geo-centric belief, but I needed something to combat the aforementioned anachronistic scientific theory. So there :P

And as for the dark path Lang is going down...well, all I can say is that it's about to get very interesting.


	16. Chapter 16: Whipping into Shape

Maybe it's me, but as this fic goes on, these chapters keep getting harder and harder to write. I hope to get this monster finished by the time the sequel comes out, because, hey, if I have a deadline, I can make it so!...Right? I'm sure there are mistakes here, but I'll go through later to fix up any errors.

Disclaimer: you should know the drill by now, but for lawsuit-prevention purposes...I don't own KFP, but I own the OCs and this plot. Thanks.

* * *

Chapter 16: Whipping into Shape

* * *

This was not the way Shifu wanted to end the year. He was a man (well, red panda) of routine, a perfectionist (who transferred said perfectionism into his two adopted children), and was happiest when he knew what to expect. Most years around this time, he was preparing for the Dong Zhi festival, which usually involved setting together the feast for the twenty-nine masters that represented all the provinces in the empire. That was a daunting enough task in itself, but, as he also favored formality and uniformity above any amount of chaos, it was a task he actually enjoyed.

This year, on the other hand, he had that feast to prepare for – by himself, now that Po was elsewhere and probably not likely to make it back in time to plan and prepare like he had the previous three years – plus an invasion to plan against, a grandchild on the way which was being borne by a snow leopardess two twitches away from a nervous breakdown, and now faced the possibility of (re)training the apprentice of the most notorious bogeyman in recent history, and on top of all that, he also had his four houseguests to worry about.

Captain Zang Deshi had been in a bad mood the past couple days, more so than usual. Whatever had been in that most recent correspondence had not been good news for the black horse, but that meant it was good news for the Dragon Warrior and Tai Lung, whatever it was. The cadet, Hu Quon, had gotten better in recent days, which was a damn near miracle if Monkey and Mantis's individual testimonies were true. The tiger youth had been in bad shape, and was now, blessedly, out of the woods. Though Shifu trusted the youth to an extent, he feared that someone so young was easily influenced by someone as untrustworthy as Zang.

But, the red panda was nothing if not devious; being small had its advantages sometimes, and one of those advantages was strategic planning. And, with help from his wife, learning to "kill them with kindness".

"I'm actually very glad that you will be here for the Dong Zhi festival, Captain," Shifu said, shortly after breakfast on the day Sonam would begin Dalang's training. The red panda wanted to keep the soldiers as far away from the training grounds as possible, and it helped that it was so cold outside. Even soldiers as accustomed to the outdoors, Corporal Liu, Lieutenant Gao and the aforementioned captain and cadet were all cozy in the kitchen, with Zang employed in a game of chess with the Jade Palace's grand master. Shifu grudgingly admitted to himself that Zang was a damn good player, which made sense. And, he told himself, it was only good manners to allow your guest to win a few rounds of chess. _At least its not mahjong_, he told himself, _if he was any good at that, I'd be broke_.

Zang moved a rook and waited for Shifu to make his move. "And why is that, Master Shifu?"

"My understanding," Shifu said as he stroked his whiskers in thought, "Is that you haven't met many of the masters who will come here for the feast – I'm afraid due to space, you won't be invited, but the afterparty is far more enjoyable. It would be an excellent chance to network. That, and the chef we hired this year is one of the best in China." Shifu wisely left out that said chef was likely starting his training with an ex-assassin right as they spoke.

"That sounds delightful," Zang said without any real feeling. "Isn't Tai Lung's child due around that time?"

"Thereabouts," the red panda said guardedly.

"Ah. Good news for the Mrs., I trust? How is she?"

"She's well. Eight months along, still healthy, knock on wood." Shifu made a move, stealing one of Zang's pieces. "Mei Xing is in good spirits, as she has reason to be; she and the baby both appear strong and healthy."

Zang didn't say anything to that, and they carried on their game in silence for a while. The horse made a move – in more ways than one – later in their game. "So where is Tai Lung?"

Shifu's hand paused over the piece he was about to move. The red panda raised a quizzical brow and asked the black horse, "You've waited this long to ask me? You could have asked me the day you met me, and I would have been happy to oblige you."

"I _did_ ask you," Zang said through a clenched jaw. "You denied any knowledge whatsoever."

_Damn!_ "Really?" the red panda asked calmly, despite the raging panic beneath his otherwise cool facade. "I must have misunderstood you. Or misheard...I fear my hearing isn't what it used to be. I believe that's a check, Captain."

Zang stared down at the game board and drew in a deep breath meant to curb his anger. "Why, so it is. A good game, Master Shifu."

"Indeed. But I'm afraid I have a meeting I must attend, if you'll excuse me..."

"So where _is_ he, anyway?"

"Where is whom?"

"Tai Lung," Zang said with strained patience.

Damn, Shifu was hoping he'd drop it already. What to say without giving too much away...? "He's on a pilgrimage."

Zang hesitated, then stated, with complete disbelief, "A pilgrimage."

"Yes."

"And he took the Dragon Warrior with him?"

"On the contrary, the Dragon Warrior insisted, despite the fact Tai Lung wished to go alone. For safety."

"For safety. Whose safety? Tai Lung seems more than capable of taking care of himself."

"You will find no disagreements from me, Captain," Shifu said, "But I confess that he appears to have far more enemies than even _he_ knows." The master then offered the horse a winning smile. "This line of questioning is very interesting...or should I say interrogation?"

"I am not interrogating you."

"Aren't you? I've been through many lines of questioning in my life, and also many lines of interrogation, and this discourse has resembled the latter for some time, now. _If_ I had something to hide, I might be intimidated, but right now I am honestly insulted you think so lowly of me."

His ruse worked. Zang looked contrite, even embarassed. "I...am very sorry if it came across that way, Master Shifu. Please believe, no offense was meant. I have no quarrel with you."

"Of course not." Shifu then stood to leave and slowly made his way to the door. The whole time, he could feel Zang's eyes on his back, and he willed to keep his fur from standing on end. He didn't like the horse, at all. He didn't like the constant questions, the attitude, and the worst thing – the thing that made the blood boil then instantly freeze in his veins – were the now-frequent questions concerning Mei Xing and her unborn child.

* * *

Around the time Shifu had begun his first game with Zang, Su Lin had made her way into her patient's room to check his progress. The whole time she was setting up by Dalang's bedside, she made mental notes of which herbs, roots and barks to get on the next market day. He was looking significantly better, but it was the season for fevers and the like (and she was far too low on willow bark for her liking). The color had come back to his face, and even though he still looked a little tired, he was levels above what he had been only two days before. His strength had come back, but the female panda noted almost immediately upon entering the room that something had shifted, something in his demeanor had changed from the fun-loving surrogate brother she had come to know into the boy she had met over ten years before. And Su Lin didn't like it.

"Say 'ah'."

Dalang opened his mouth and allowed Su Lin to peer in. He only closed his jaw when she was satisfied with what she saw.

"Any chance you can _not_ clear me, at least for another couple days?" he asked, rubbing his sore jaw and yawning.

"Why?" she asked, puzzled. "You're fine now. It was just as I expected: a bug you just needed to get through."

Dalang groaned as she started to pack up her herbs and medicines. "If you clear me, Sonam has to start training me."

Now the panda stopped, then looked concerned. "_Training_? You? Does he know...?"

"I'm about as enthusiastic as you are," he said dismally, without saying whether or not Sonam knew about his past. He sighed. "I wanted to put it all behind me."

Knowing what he meant, Su Lin pulled together her herbs and medical instruments and put them in her box. "Sounds like he isn't giving you that option."

Dalang didn't need to ask who she meant by "he". "Why is he after you in the first place?" the panda asked. "I thought faking your death would have—"

"That was the whole point," Dalang explained. He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "To avoid Shen and Asmodei...the only way either of them would ever leave me alone is if they thought I was dead. Trust me, Azzie isn't coming this far from Siberia just for giggles."

Despite the seriousness of the topic, Su Lin giggled: "_Azzie_?"

"Its what I called him when I was a kid and couldn't quite pronounce his name yet. He hated it, but I'm not sure why he hated it so much."

"With a nickname like that, I wouldn't much like it myself." Su Lin closed her herb box and sighed, pressing her hand against the carved wooden peony on the lid. "Have they really been gone a month?"

Dalang paused. "Shit, you're right. It doesn't seem that long."

"You're right, it doesn't." She knew he was waiting for her to say something else. "I was willing, to, you know...that night, before he left."

He picked up on it right away. He was used to Su Lin's shyness regarding the subject...no matter how much he was willing to fill her in on. Dalang snorted and smirked, "About damn time."

Su Lin narrowed her brown eyes at him. "Excuse me?"

He held up his hands in a placating way. "Just sayin', the way you two were, I swore he'd propose by now."

"Yeah, me too." After another pause, she said, "I've been thinking lately...if he came back and asked for my hand...I'm not sure I'd say yes."

This made him stop short. "What? Why not? Su, you've wanted to get married as long as I've known you. And lets face it, Po is a one-of-a-kind guy, and I'm not just saying _that_."

"No, I know. But lately, I've been thinking, just thinking that..." she sighed heavily. "For the first time, here, I have independence. I have my own business of sorts. If I wanted to, I could open up my own apothecary and do more than make ends meet, just like Mama did. If I get married, I have to give that all up and focus on keeping house and having lots of babies. And yeah, I wanted that when I was younger, but right now I'm not sure if that's what will make me happy. Is that weird? I thought I knew what I wanted, so why am I so confused?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "I don't know what to tell you, kid. After I ran away, after you and Auntie knocked some sense into me, that's all I wanted, too. I wanted a family – a real family – a life and career of my own, and to forget all about being in war. Well, I guess two outta three ain't bad."

"You've come a long way," she assured him. "And I hope you know...I'm proud of you, Dalang."

He gave her a smile, yet still appeared somewhat unsure of himself. He stood and grabbed the closest clean shirt, then walked over to the wardrobe standing along the far wall. He reached into one of the drawers and ruffled through summer clothes and pulled out the bamboo staff he had hidden beneath the clothes. Su Lin watched carefully as he pulled on the ends of the bamboo handles to reveal the gleaming steel encased within.

"Sonam made that?" she asked in awe.

"Yup. Dunno how, or why...but in some way, I'm glad he did. I don't want to do this...I _really_ don't want to do this. But like you said, Asmodei isn't giving me a choice." He resheathed the swords and put it aside as he put the shirt on. It was one of the few he owned that had sleeves, which he only wore outside the kitchen, however infrequent that would be. But if he would training outside with Sonam, he needed to be warm. A sudden cold snap had overtaken the valley, which only made him worry about Po and Tai Lung more. As much as he hoped a good snow would slow Asmodei down (a very, very vain hope), he worried an early snow would hinder the two warriors...and he really wanted them there when the storm finally hit, literally and figuratively. "Wish me luck," he said. _I'm going to need it_, he added silently.

* * *

"Um..."

"Somethin' wrong, lad?"

"Wha? Uh, no, not exactly...are you sure this is a good idea?"

"What? Of course it is! I want to see what you're capable of."

"Okay, yeah, I knew _that_, but...this isn't exactly what I had in mind." Dalang trailed off as he looked around the interior, feeling the blood draining from his face. When Sonam had led him to the training hall, the tiger chef expected him to fetch some wooden practice swords. But as soon as they had entered, Sonam instead stopped and looked at him expectedly. That could only mean one thing.

"Does Shifu know about this?" the tiger asked him.

"He gave me free rein to train you. That includes all training equipment...and I mean _all_ training equipment."

Dalang's face paled further when he watched flames shoot up out of the Field of Fiery Death. His eye twitched a little. "I don't think I can do this."

"Why not? What doesn't kill you only—"

"For the love of the gods, please don't finish that. Asmodei used to say it a lot."

Sonam promptly shut his jaw. "Right. Let's jump right in, shall we?"

"Uh, yeah, no."

"Nope, 'no' isn't an option."

"Sonam, I am not my wife."

"Good thing, too. I don't think you'd make a very pretty woman."

Dalang scowled, annoyed that his own joke had been used against him. "What I was _about_ to say...she's a kung fu master. I am significantly _below_ that level."

"And if you say you're a level zero, I'm throwing your fuzzy tuckus right straight in the middle and leaving you there. Now get your tail in gear and prove me right."

Dalang drew back a little bit. Unfortunately for him, Sonam may have been getting on in years, but he still had damn good reflexes. So before Dalang was even aware of it, he had been shoved right into the middle of the twirling serpents...

Shifu poked his head in later, right around lunchtime, to check on Dalang's progress. The Jade Palace's Grand Master had been deep in thought about how to deal with the myriad issues he would face in the coming month or two. _This winter is going to be one hell of a doozy_, he thought. Upon entering the Training Hall, he spotted Sonam first. Then he saw the snow leopard wincing periodically, then hiding his scarred face behind his heavy paw and shaking his head mournfully. Shifu turned to look at the obstacle course...and was immediately reminded of the first time a certain panda had taken to it. Dalang was currently getting hit in all manner of places by the Wooden Warriors, and no matter where the hapless feline turned, another swinging limb hit him in either the face, chest, stomach or – most unfortunately – even lower.

"Oof..." Shifu said with a wince of his own.

Sonam made what sounded like something between a laugh and a sob, still shaking his head. "And the worst part..." he said in response to the red panda's noise, "Is that this is the _best_ he's done."

"The _best_?" Shifu incredulously asked. "He's getting his tail handed to him!"

Sonam laugh-cried again. "I know, Shifu...I know..."

When the snow leopard looked back up, Dalang had finally managed to extricate himself from the Forest of Wooden Warriors, dazed and dizzy and more likely bruised in places he didn't even know he had. But before either of the elders could move or warn him, the tiger stumbled right onto the Field of Fiery Death.

The less said about the ensuing carnage, the better.

When Dalang finally dragged himself onto the safety of the wooden walkway, he was breathless, bruised, bleeding from various cuts, and patches of fur were still smoking. His claws sank into the floor boards to literally drag himself back towards the elders, before collapsing at their feet.

"I'm not gonna ask how I did," the tiger wheezed.

"That would be for the best," Shifu assured him. "Now, whose idea was it to throw you onto the obstacle course in the first place?"

"You gotta ask?"

"Ah." Shifu looked up at Sonam, who looked like he was rethinking his methods. "So, you had a rough start, but I think a break for lunch and tea would be a good idea."

Dalang flicked his eyes up to the red panda. "This coming from Master Hard-ass himself?"

"I might be a hard-ass, but I'm not completely heartless. Get up, there's hot pot in the kitchen, and I'll brew some oolong for you."

"Any chance you can throw some willow bark in it?"

He wanted to, just for him; Shifu remembered his own student-days, when willow bark – the best anti-inflamatory he knew, treating everything from headaches to fevers – became as much a part of his diet as tea and rice (and sometimes he wondered if Oogway was right about _that_ being the reason Shifu largely no longer felt much in the way of pain). But Mantis had a point when he refused to give Shifu anymore painkillers. "Pain is the body's way of telling you something's wrong", the insect had told him as soon as he had joined the Five. And kicking the habit for even the slightest headache had been one hell of a bear. And he didn't want that for Dalang, anyway. So he said, "I won't incur Mantis's wrath. Besides, you'll need your wits about you in the afternoon. Come on, up."

Dalang staggered to his feet and limped out of the training hall while pressing a hand against his side, his face screwed up into an agonized grimace. Shifu's steely blue eyes followed him out, but he paused before leaving long enough to say to Sonam, "Work on your plan, I've got one of my own."

"It'd be nice of you to share," the blacksmith said.

"Trust me. This isn't my first time."

* * *

"How's the hot pot?"

Dalang nodded, spooning more of the hot noodles and vegetables into his mouth. "Rilly goo," he said through a full mouth. He accepted another cup of oolong from Shifu and downed it quickly. The red panda was eating with him in the kitchen, sitting on a high stool while Dalang stood – the tiger said something about being too sore to sit. Shifu understood. He'd been there. "So, you had a rough start, but to be fair, you never really learned kung fu..."

Dalang shook his head, then swallowed, reaching for another bean bun. "I learned a little bit. Shang taught me some of what he knew. He was always better with a _jian_ sword though; I was better at sabers."

"Yes, that's what I remember about your brother. What of Asmodei's fighting style?"

Dalang chewed and swallowed a hefty bite of a bean bun before replying. "Doesn't really have one. What I noticed though, most kung fu sword fighting...it looks pretty, but its not very effective."

Furrowing his brows, Shifu asked, "How do you mean?" This was what the red panda was waiting for. He wanted to see exactly what went through the tiger's mind when it came to fighting, what he knew, what he didn't know...and Dalang didn't disappoint.

"Well, point of fighting is to take your enemy out quickly, and make sure he stays down and doesn't get back up," Dalang explained. "If he's attacking you, deadly force is always appropriate."

"Only in specific circumstances, right?"

"Nope, every time."

"_Every_ time?"

"That's what I said. S' what I was taught." Dalang paused, bean bun halfway eaten. He noted Shifu's disapproving look. "Though I probably shouldn't focus too much on that anymore, should I?"

"No, no, I'd actually like to hear more," Shifu said, pouring himself some tea. "I know so very little about you, I realize, I'd like to learn more about your past."

"Uh-huh," Dalang said, obviously unconvinced. "Why'd you wait until now to ask me this stuff? Why not right after Shen died? Why not before I married your adopted daughter?"

"Because your brother also had just died, and you were in mourning. I knew it was a bad time. As for the latter, that was the happiest I had ever seen Tigress, and I wasn't going to ruin it. My feelings aside, marrying you appears to be the best decision she's ever made."

This answer sobered the tiger's temper immediately. Shifu continued, "I also figured, like you, that chapter of your life was over. It made no sense to revisit it. Was I concerned when Tigress married you? Of course I was. But as long as I've known you, you've never hurt her, which is why I gave my consent."

"That's not what I heard," he accused.

Shifu frowned. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"I am trying to have a nice lunch with you, and you seem intent on arguing."

"I'm intent on keeping that part of my past out of my future, how hard is that to understand?"

"Dalang, I am trying to help you!"

Dalang stood straighter, baring his fangs. "You don't get it, do you? You'd help me more by leaving me alone! I was a _monster_ as a kid, and I never want to be that monster again! _That's_ what you're doing to me, I can see it! You're trying to turn me back into that monster so I can _defeat_ a monster!"

Shifu stopped himself before he said something he would regret. Then he saw what the real problem was. It wasn't until Dalang had blown up at him mere seconds ago that he saw the truth: he was terrified of Koshchei. But what terrified him more was _becoming_ Koshchei. It explained it. It explained so much...the cooking, the pacifism, the guardedness, the lies...

"So, you don't want to become Koshchei."

"Would _you_?" the striped feline countered.

Shifu set his tea aside, steepled his hands and stared straight at the tiger. "Your understanding of kung fu is minimal."

"If you're trying to make me feel better, you're doing a bang-up job," he bit back.

"And if you're trying to use sarcasm as a defense mechanism, I can see right through it."

That shut him up quickly.

"Don't feel bad," Shifu said. "We all have defense mechanisms. Some of us use humor, others sarcasm. I try to show neither: it demonstrates weakness. Koshchei will expect you to use humor or sarcasm. I thought you weren't physically ready, but that's not the problem..." Shifu picked up the closest knife and flicked it expertly right at Dalang's neck.

The effect was immediate. Dalang's hand shot up and caught the knife by the tip with his fingers. Just as quickly, he flicked the knife back and threw, embedding the blade into the tabletop right next to Shifu's hand. The red panda didn't flinch. Instead, he smiled triumphantly and yanked the knife from the wooden tabletop.

"The problem," the red panda said, without taking his eyes off his son-in-law, "is that you are physically ready, but not _mentally_ ready. By all means, drilling with Sonam to keep up your physical skills is vital, but we should also focus on you keeping _your_ focus in battle."

Dalang stared back at him, shocked. He couldn't believe he had just thrown a knife right at his father-in-law (as a younger man, he half-expected to be arranged to marry into such a family where fighting at the dinner table would be as much a Dongzhi tradition as lanterns and feasts, but this was Shifu; doing so invited the loss of some vital organs). "I...am really, really sorry."

"Oh, no need to explain," Shifu said with a smile. "It was a reflex. Much like this one." With that, he whapped the tiger on the head with a wooden spoon. Dalang rubbed his smarting cranium, but still looked chastened.

"Now," Shifu continued, "I am offering to develop your spirituality concerning kung fu."

"How the hell do you intend to do that with only a month's time?"

"If I can teach Tigress to control her strength in three months, I can teach you to meditate in one week."

Dalang stared at him, aghast. "_Meditation_? How the hell is that supposed to help me?"

"You'd be surprised. Do you agree?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"No."

"Then yes."

* * *

He decided the best place to do this was in Oogway's favored meditation spot: beneath the branches of the Sacred Peach Tree of Heavenly Wisdom. Shifu admitted (to himself, if no one else), that meditating below the tree's branches gave him greater peace than meditating anywhere else. Perhaps it was the location, so far removed from the noise of the Palace. Or maybe it was opening one's eyes to see the glory of Nature spreading out for hundreds of miles before him that gave him a greater appreciation for what he had and for being alive. Shifu bet, however, that he felt better meditating here because it helped him hold onto the last pleasant memories of his late master.

He made sure Dalang was settled comfortably on the ground next to him, his rump cushioned by the thin layer of dried leaves. The red panda crossed his legs into the full lotus position and rested his wrists on his knees as he prepared to begin the lesson. "All right, now that we are in position..."

"Um..."

Shifu sighed. "Yes?"

"I don't think this lotus thing is going to work out."

Shifu glanced over and saw that Dalang was having difficulty trying to replicate the Lotus position...and was making agonized expressions as he tried to twist his knees in ways they were never meant to twist.

"I thought you were flexible enough to do that?" Shifu asked him.

Dalang stayed silent, struggling to bring his other ankle up to his other knee. The tiger wasn't having an easy time of it. But the tiger also wisely kept his trap shut concerning his, ahem, flexibility. That was _not_ a conversation to have with your father-in-law. "Hey, you said so yourself, it takes years to develop flexibility..."

"And years longer to apply it in combat, yes, I remember," the red panda said shortly, reminded too much of his first real training session with Po. "But you're in better shape now that Po was when he started."

"I dunno, I have gained a little weight in the last few years."

"How can you tell?" the old master asked. "I mean, you're still the string-bean I've known since we met."

"I'm not _that_ skinny. I mean, sure, I could use a little more muscle definition..."

"Absolutely, which is why I'm having Sonam fix up the weight-lifting equipment. Also, we need to develop your core strength..."

"...Which translates to lots and lots of sit-ups," Dalang said depressedly. "I hate sit-ups."

"It could be worse; I could have you punch into jars of sand repeatedly."

"Ugh, I remember those. Shen had me do those as punishment more than once..."

Shifu quickly changed the subject. "Then let's keep from doing that, shall we? Now, let's get you into position..."

"Is half-lotus okay? I mean, my knee's really starting to hurt."

Shifu sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Yes, half-lotus will do. For now. When this is over, I'm drilling you in tai chi."

"What good is that going to do? It's just a bunch of stretching..."

"Dalang, you're just going to have to trust me on this one. Now, _if_ we are in position," the red panda said with a glare at his son-in-law. Dalang gulped and sat a little straighter, feeling an almost painful ache in his knees and ankles. The rest of his body hurt as well, but he wasn't going to complain too much in front of Shifu. He mirrored the red panda's posture and arm movements, feeling nothing short of ridiculous as he did so.

Shifu began:

"Now, the point of meditation is to look inward, to keep yourself occupied on the here and now. During meditation, you will become acutely aware of your surroundings, forget about the past and the future, at least for the time being. We will begin by practicing our breathing. First, inhale through the nose, so that your chest expands, not your shoulders; your shoulders remain stationary. I'll walk you through it. Inhale through the nose, nice and slow. Now hold it in for a moment, then slowly – _slowly_ – let it out through the nose. Try it a few times."

Dalang obeyed, slowly inhaling, pausing to hold the breath, then slowly exhaling through his nose, his eyes closing on their own. His breathing made a hollow sound near the back of his throat that echoed in his ears, providing a type of white noise that reminded the tiger of a waterfall, or surf crashing on the shore. It was deep, soothing...

"How did that feel?" Shifu asked.

Dalang opened his eyes, surprised to find that rather than feel tired...he felt a little refreshed, like he had just awoken from a cat nap. "Actually...not that bad."

Shifu smiled. "Good. Practice it another moment to be sure you've got the timing correct, then we move on."

While Dalang continued to practice the proper breathing, taking deep breaths to expand his diaphram, and feeling already like many of his worries were falling off his shoulders, which oddly enough began to feel much lighter. Shifu watched him carefully, taking in the tiger's posture, his breathing, and his expressions. There was something still bothering him, whatever it was.

"Kung fu requires discipline. Physical discipline, so that every movement, every strike, every single thing you do becomes instinct, as natural as blinking and breathing. And Mental discipline...for without it, none of the remarkable things kung fu is known for will be possible. Now, _breathe_..."

After a time, Shifu began to speak, making sure to keep Dalang in the moment: "Kung fu was developed hundreds of years ago, purely for defense. There are forms that are more aggressive than others, but the large part of kung fu concerns defending what you hold dear. It is a way for the soft and weak to defend against the hard and strong. It gives them a chance to live in an unfair world, and, in many cases, can give them a chance to look deeper inside themselves, and see something there they didn't even know was there."

And Shifu had learned that lesson more than once over the course of his career. He hoped that he would relearn that lesson one more time from Dalang.

* * *

In the kitchen of the Long and Feng Cafe, the lunch crowd had just dispersed, and while Mr. Ping was preparing for the dinner crowd on his own, the Furious Five were meeting there to discuss a plan of action.

"Why aren't we out training again?" Mantis asked

"Shifu and Sonam needed the training hall for Dalang," Monkey answered.

"Man, I'd pay good money to see that."

Tigress glared over at Crane from her seat in front of her son. She was spooning small bites of porridge into Shang's mouth, the little cub gumming at the spoon and making raspberries at his mother, thus getting most of the porridge all over his face rather than in his mouth. Tigress cleaned off his face while keeping her attention on her friends. "I would appreciate you showing a little more support. This isn't easy for him."

"After facing Shifu's training," Mantis said, "I can safely say that."

"Why are you all convinced he'll do a bad job?" Viper asked. "He held his own in the Jiao War, I'm confident he'll do fine now."

"Thank you, Viper," Tigress said, finally getting the last of the porridge off little Shang's cheeks.

"I don't see why _you_ didn't offer to teach him," Crane told her. "He's your husband..."

"Exactly," Tigress said. "I would be too willing to go easy on him. That's why I asked Sonam."

"So it has nothing to do with the fact you suck at sword fighting?" Monkey asked.

Tigress bristled. "I do _not_ suck at sword fighting, I just prefer unarmed combat."

In stage whisper, Monkey told the others, "She failed Shifu's Blade Training 101 _twice_."

"I did _not_ fail," she snapped. "I just got low marks on Technique. Anyone can get low marks on Technique!"

"Po didn't," Viper said. "I was pretty impressed."

"Yes, we were all very impressed," the feline said irritably, whiskers twitching. Her sour mood didn't last, as Shang giggled, made a rather large bubble with his spit, then squealed with laughter when it burst. Even she had to admit – disgusting as it was – it was adorable.

"You have a strange, strange kid," Mantis said. "I like him."

"Just promise me you won't try to corrupt him until he's a teenager," Tigress asked.

"Hey, I make no promises." Mantis hopped up onto the table next to the tiger cub and his mother, then sat cross-legged. "So...Asmodei Koshchei..."

Shang's little ears perked up a little.

Tigress held her head in her hands, then massaged her temples. "I'm thinking..._trying_ to think of a plan."

"The work's done for us," Monkey said. "The Thread of Hope is too flimsy for big armies to cross."

"And don't forget, the back way that the Jiao took has been completely demolished," Crane added. "There's only one way in, one way out."

"And that's what worries me," she said. "The Valley is not ready for a prolonged siege, and if we are invaded...there's nowhere for us to run."

"Tigress," Viper said, "You sound like you've already given up."

"No way," Mantis laughed. "Miss Take-No-Prisoners herself?" His laughter died off when he saw the sober look on Tigress's face. "What, you're serious?"

"I have different priorities now," the feline told him. "My family's safety comes first. Then the Valley's. Then my own. If my home and loved ones are in danger...I have to do whatever I can to protect them...even if that means running away."

The other members of the Furious Five were stunned. This was not the Tigress they knew and loved. This was not the same strong woman who had blossomed from a precocious little girl.

"What's the matter with you?" Mantis asked. "This isn't the you we know! Did droppin' that kid soften your brain?"

Crane cringed at the harsh words, but was shocked to see Monkey joining in: "You are turning your back on those who trust in you! That makes you a coward!"

"What are you all doing? Why are you talking to her like that?" Crane demanded.

"Crane," Tigress calmly said, "It's alright. You don't need to fight my battles for me."

Calm. She was calm. She was _calm_? Monkey had called her an outright coward – to her face – and she was _perfectly calm_?

"You are not the woman we know," Crane said sharply. "Shifu was right. You _have_ changed. For a while, I thought it was for the better, but now I see what really happened. You've become what you've always hated the most."

Tigress's back stiffened. Her whiskers twitched, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. "Don't say it..."

Crane continued, "You've become a Traditional Woman."

Tigress stood, fur bristling, then turned on him with a snarl. "You take that back, right now."

Remarkably, for one who so hated confrontation, Crane stood his ground. "No. You've spent your whole life up 'til now fighting those stereotypes of womanhood, and now you're turning your back on your values and giving in to what everyone expects of you as a woman: to stay at home with the baby, cook and clean for your husband, and to run away from a fight. What you're suggesting is running away. Now we both know you are too badass to run away when someone threatens your family—"

"Family comes first, Crane," Tigress seethed. "You know that as well as I!"

"Yes it does," Crane said with a glance towards Viper, his beloved wife. "But just because you're a mother now doesn't mean you need to act like all the other mothers do."

"What are you suggesting, that I leave my family behind?"

"No," he snapped, "I'm saying stop acting like a scared mother rabbit and start acting like the mother tiger you are!"

This response stunned her into silence. She looked like she wanted to fire back her own insults to him, but she couldn't do it. Tigress knew she was angry, and that anything said at that point would hurt her and her friends. So she sighed and turned back to her baby.

"I need some time to think about this. I have a lot on my mind."

This was their cue to leave. If Tigress required some time alone, it was best just to let her have it. She looked into her son's green eyes and sighed. Crane was right, as much as she hated to admit it. But she had never been in a position like this before. Not only did she have the Valley to think about, but for the first time in her life, she had a family to call her own, and she would be damned if someone tried to take that from her. She had fought tooth and claw to get where she was in life, and for once – just _once_ – she didn't want to fight. Perhaps discretion was the better part of valor. But she couldn't run. Crane was right again. Running meant she was weak, just like any other mother running away with her baby. She couldn't run, not when so many people depended on her.

"I never thought I'd say this," she said to Shang, who, at his age, had no idea what she was saying anyway, "...but I don't envy Po. He is the Dragon Warrior, but if I can barely handle this kind of pressure just being leader of the Furious Five...what chance would I have had if I had been the Dragon Warrior instead?"

Shang purred, staring up into her face with a wondering look. He was too young to understand the look on her face. Tigress sighed and picked him up, cuddling with him while he nuzzled her. "We can't fight this war outright, not like we usually do," she said, caressing her baby's head. "We have to change tactics. But how?"

She looked down into her son's eyes and sighed again. "If only your uncle were still here; I could ask him, and he'd know."

That's when the idea came to her.

She swiftly got up, Shang in her arms, and trotted to the family altar. She looked up at the ancestor tablets and the portraits of the departed family on her husband's side. She looked up at the portrait of her brother-in-law, and smiled.

"Jiayu Pass...that's it." She laughed. "That's _it_!"

* * *

Shifu's meditation lesson had ended, and now it was Sonam's turn. The snow leopard had brought out the practice dummy painted to look like a panda, "to sharpen your claws on", and while Dalang was sparring with the dummy, Sonam set up a scarecrow-like dummy on a stake in the middle of the courtyard. He even took the time to paint a frowny face on the dummy, who was sure to get mauled before this lesson was over. Shifu, meanwhile, watched Dalang's progress very carefully. He had taken well to the meditation, and he seemed more focused now. But what troubled the red panda now was exactly how Dalang was fighting first the child's dummy, then the makeshift dummy Sonam had set up. The tiger was hitting all the wrong places...and by wrong places, that meant places on the body that would certainly be grounds for disqualification in a fair match. When the red panda voiced his concerns aloud, Dalang turned to stare at him.

"What do you mean I can't hit there?" Dalang asked.

Shifu was ready to rebuke him with a stern 'isn't it obvious?' before he saw the look of pure confusion in the tiger's eyes. The red panda paused, then asked him, "Why do _you_ hit there?"

"To take him down as soon as possible. That's what you're supposed to do."

"Dalang, have you ever been hit in those areas?"

The tiger shrugged. "Sure. It was part of my training. Eyes, head, groin, got hit everywhere it hurt, so I would know how to take down my opponent fastest."

"You realize, of course, that in kung fu, those regions are off-limits."

Dalang stared at him. "...Wait, seriously?"

"Yes."

"But I see Tigress kicking the hell out of people in the face all the time!"

"The face, yes, but not the head. Head injuries, I'm sure you know, are far more insidious than more visible wounds. Kung fu is about honor, and fighting honorably..."

"Which is great and all," Dalang said, "when you're fighting against someone who follows those rules."

Shifu paused and thought about this. Then he smiled. "Actually, why don't you show me a bit more?"

The tiger blinked. "Are you sure?"

"Why not? It's clear you're very strong, but I want to see what else you're capable of. Go on. Attack the dummy." Then Shifu stepped back to avoid getting hit with random dummy parts.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Sonam asked in a hushed tone. "I'm supposed to be training him with swords, and you're worried about unarmed combat?"

"The swords are extensions of the arms," Shifu said, "You told me that yourself. I want to see what damage his arms alone can do."

Dalang started with throwing punches into the dummy, literally knocking the stuffing out of it. Shifu noted immediately that the tiger did not stay rooted to the ground, like he had taught Tigress and Tai Lung to do. Instead, Dalang was constantly moving. His shoulders moved as he danced from foot to foot, and threw his whole arm – fist, wrist, elbow, shoulder and back – into a punch. His whole body undulated with each punch. He held himself like a boxer, Shifu realized; he had seen boxing before, many years ago, when he had been protecting the northern border against barbarians. The barbarians had a style of fighting very similar to this, a brutal version of boxing, wrestling, and what Shifu called 'back alley fighting'. It was a style that had no rules. As someone who thrived on rules and order, this style horrified and terrified him. But now that he saw it again, years later, through more experienced eyes, the more he saw that there was a method to the madness after all.

He stopped short of calling it 'barbarian' now. Dalang may not have been ethnic Han Chinese, but his heart most certainly was, and that was good enough for him. The red panda master now saw that this style of fighting had a little grace to it. It was a style that worshiped the body's limits, the limits of the fighter's strength...then spit, laughed at, and mocked those limits and told them to push even harder. The aim was exactly as Dalang said: take them down as soon and as hard as possible. Make sure they don't get back up. And it made sense. Manchus were surrounded by various tribes and nomads, and there was no telling (especially growing up as Jiao Shen's son) who to trust and who to kill. This fighting style, whatever it was called, made no distinction between victim and attacker; to the fighter, everyone was suspect. And no one was truly safe until all opponents were down and out of the fight.

"Damn," he said, then uttered a worse curse. "We're screwed."

Sonam arched a brow and stared down at his diminutive friend. "Come again?"

"I just realized, after watching Dalang, that we may be in some serious trouble." Shifu pointed out his concerns as Dalang continued his shadowboxing. "Everything I have taught my students will end up hurting them, if they go up against Koshchei. Look, Dalang never lowers his stance, ever, and he's always moving, always in motion, holding his hands up in front of his face...I told Tigress that if she ever did that, someone would hit her core and it would kill her, but now I'm seeing that was wrong. And Mantis taught me that his 'staying still for a really long time' technique..."

"He needs a catchier name for that."

"I agree. But staying still...that could kill him. Look, look at how he moves! That's the same way street fighters move..."

"That's right," Sonam said, his one good eye lighting up with recognition. "If the fighter goes down in a fight, he's dead. Like fighting in a prison yard...got to be prepared for anything."

"Exactly, and that's what worries me," Shifu confessed. "These people, these men who will be coming here...they don't fight like we do. They follow no rules. They just...use everything that they have, and more. They use their surroundings more than I've ever seen. These enemies are...far more creative than I've been giving them credit."

"You know what this means, then?" Sonam hinted.

"What's that?" Shifu asked.

The snow leopard elder smirked, his one good eye twinkling with sly mirth. "This means we're going to be even more creative."

"Sonam...what are you planning?"

"Who, me? Why, what makes you think I'm up to anything at all? Dalang!" he suddenly shouted at the tiger, holding up his own fists. "When you punch, less from the hip, more from the shoulder!"

"From the hip's stronger!" Dalang shouted back.

"From the shoulder'll get you more hits. Not as powerful, but quicker, gets you out of a tight spot a lot faster. Try that whole sequence again, this time punching from the shoulder!"

Shifu glanced up at Sonam, visibly impressed. "Why Sonam, I had no idea...which style did you learn?"

"The devil are you talking about? I never trained in anything. That's just what I learned picking fights in the school yard...and prison."

"You went to prison."

"Are you really surprised?"

"No. No I am not. Why did you..."

Sonam cut him off with a quick, "Funny story, I'll have to tell you sometime..."

A shout cut him off, and all three males were surprised to find Tigress jogging over to them, short of breath from the run up the mountain. "Shifu!" she called again.

"What is it?" he asked. "What happened?"

"Nothing – no emergency," she said, panting; Shang was strapped to her back in his sling, and he squealed with glee when he caught sight of his baba. Tigress continued, "I had an idea on how to beat the invasion, and I need to run this by you all."

"All ears, love," Sonam said.

"The Lotus style," Tigress said. "Teach the villagers the Lotus style."

Shifu nodded. "I had already considered asking my wife to teach the women in the—"

"No! Not just the women!" Tigress said. "_Everyone_. Men, women, old and young..._everyone_ has to learn it, or some degree of it."

"But it was only meant to be..."

"To be used by women, I know," she said excitedly. "But Master, think about it, women are not as physically strong as men, right? Well, except for certain exceptions...but for the most part, men are physically stronger. Think of the villagers – all of them – as women: the soft and weak going up against the hard and strong. Lotus Style is ideal for teaching across class, species, and skill levels in a relatively short amount of time. Kung fu like _you_ teach takes years, whereas we only have weeks, maybe less. Shifu, convince Aunt Wu to teach _everyone_ in the village the Lotus Style."

"Honey," Dalang asked warily. "What are you planning?"

Tigress turned to her husband with a grin. "Your brother's helped me from the Great Beyond. About eight years back, after you had run away, your brothers were involved in a battle at the Jiayu Pass; that's where I got the idea. Just as then, we're going to isolate the enemy's weaknesses and use it against them. We'll be fighting a war much different than anything we've fought before; they won't expect it." She kissed her husband on the cheek. "I can't tell you everything right now, but I'm confident this will work. I've already talked to Crane, Viper, Monkey and Mantis, and they're all on board. I just need you all to help me."

"You know which way I'll vote," Dalang smiled, hugging her.

"Likewise," Sonam said.

Shifu nodded, deep in thought, then said, "Then I'd best get down to the school before it gets too late."

* * *

Down at the Lotus School's largest building, where the larger classes were held for beginners and intermediate levels, Shifu found Wu Lien instructing young girls in the very basics. She was also offering pointers to a graduate student-teacher, a ewe who was a master in her own right. The ewe took over the lesson while Shifu broke the news as gently as he could...

"You want me to do _what_?" Wu Lien gasped.

Shifu knew he was asking a lot of her, and hemmed and hawed a fair bit while he let it sink in. "Ah, yes, we'd like you to branch out and teach everyone in the valley your Lotus style."

"Shifu, I love you, but do you have any idea..."

"You don't have to be the only one teaching, mind. You have plenty of students who are fully capable of—"

"Yes, I know they're capable of teaching it, but—"

"And it is a style best suited for our delicate situation..."

"Shifu!" she snapped. "Will you listen to me for one damn minute?"

The room had gone silent. Both red pandas were quickly aware that the Lotus Style beginner's class had stopped their stretching drills to stare at the two old masters. As many of these were little girls just starting their training, the use of the bad word was cause enough to give their undivided attention. The ewe leading the class looked at her master helplessly, unsure if the marital argument would continue, or if she should move the children to another classroom. Wu smiled disarmingly at her students and grabbed her husband's arm. "Would you excuse us a few minutes, dears? Thanks." Then she forcefully dragged him out into the courtyard of the school, which was blissfully empty for the morning classes.

"You are out of your damn mind!" she hissed in a low whisper. "There's no way this can work!"

"It _can_ work, because it already _has_," he insisted. "I recall the force of women from age seven to seventy-five, women that _you_ trained...it's worked before and it can work again!"

"But I _failed_, Shifu!"

"Once, you failed _once_."

"Once was enough!"

"Think of how many times _my_ teaching has failed," he pointed out, trying to get her to see his point. "Think of _my_ failures, and there have been a lot of them! Did I stop teaching because I made a few mistakes?"

"Your mistakes didn't kill all your students," she told him, mournfullly.

Sobered, Shifu sighed, then pulled his wife into his arms, offering her his shoulder to rest her head on. "You can't keep blaming yourself for that. There were too many things outside your control...for all your astrology and divination, there was no way you could have predicted that, no way to prevent it from happening. Some things were meant to happen, awful as they may be. For example, there's a reason Tai Lung went to prison. Do I still blame myself for putting him in that position? You're damn right I do!"

"But it was ultimately his responsibility," she said. "He was a man when the rampage happened. I love him as my own flesh and blood, but he had to answer for his deeds."

Shifu paused, then asked, "Is that what this about? Penance?"

"What?"

"You refused to teach your style for so many years, and I practically had to twist your arm to teach it here...did you refuse because you're punishing yourself for what happened so many years ago?"

"Why shouldn't I?" she asked, pulling away from him. "It was my folly and my pride that killed them. I can't let that happen again..."

"So you're refusing to help...because you're afraid of that happening again?"

"I don't want anyone getting hurt," she said. "It'll be safer for the villagers to come up to the Jade Palace..."

"There's no safety there; we have limited resources, and even then, you know Koshchei is creative and adaptable...he'll find a way to break a prolonged seige. And we both know that whatever he does, it will make the Jiao look like Taoist monks by comparison." He hesitated, trying to find the best words to describe it. "The benefit of your style is that it can be taught quickly to a wide variety of people, with different backgrounds, different skills and abilities..."

"And it was supposed to only be taught to women," she pressed.

"I understand; because women are among the most vulnerable in society. Most of the females in this valley already know some of your moves for basic self-defense...but what about their children? Their husbands? If we're going to survive this, _everyone_ needs to know something about the Lotus style."

"You'll have a hard time convincing those men to take up my cause."

"Not if we tell them what's at stake."

Wu gasped, "You're going to _tell_ them?"

"And why shouldn't I? Keeping them ignorant will make it worse. If I tell them what's at stake, remind them that we need all available hands, they will step up to the occasion."

"It would incite a panic! You forget these are farmers, merchants...not soldiers," she said. "These are people who love and cherish peace!"

"Then who better to protect the only home they have ever known?" he reasoned.

She was silent for a long moment, running over different scenarios in her head. When she spoke, she heavily sighed first, her shoulders heaving with the exhale. "I think this is a bad idea."

"I've run out of good ones."

She looked into his blue eyes, her own green eyes guarded, fearful. "I have good reason to doubt my abilities...but I also have good reason to trust in my students." She stood straighter, showing off her ballet-honed posture, and said proudly, "I have the utmost faith in them. If, as you claim, the enemy has already infiltrated the Valley of Peace, then this training will need to be discreet..."

Shifu grinned. He knew he had won.

* * *

"So what's the plan?" Monkey asked.

Tigress sat them all down in her old dormitory room, around a brazier to keep them warm. Shang sat in her lap, happily wrapped in a blanket to fend off against any drafts. "All right, now I'll go into more detail," she said. "The plan is to take a page out of my brother-in-law's book. Jiao Shang led an attack against the Jiayuguan, a major pass in the Great Wall, wherein he used his enemy's strengths against them. He also played into their prejudices about the Manchurians. That is what we'll do. We'll pretend that nothing is out of the ordinary, that this is a DongZhi festival like any other, and when the first sign of trouble starts up, we take out that trouble, one-by-one so that no one notices..."

Viper caught on quickly. With a smile, she continued, "...so by the time the bad guys realize what's happening..."

"We'll have already gotten the upper hand, if not outright won." Tigress brought her friends in closer and whispered. "This needs to be completely under wraps. This plan does not leave this room until I say so. Shou Gou is gathering more intelligence about Koshchei and the coming army. Once we know what kind of threat we're dealing with, then we'll let the rest of the valley in on the secret...but we can only reveal it in code."

"How will they know the code?" Crane asked.

"It'll have to be in language that anyone can understand: farming. Say for example 'the rice is stored away' means it's safe. If 'grain has been found missing', it means to be on your guard, there's trouble about. 'They caught the thief' can mean that the time to attack has arrived. Crane and Viper, I'm leaving it up to you to decide the code and come up with an effective way to alert the farmers of an attack."

"Why not use fireworks?" Mantis asked. "It's a festival; bad guys won't think it's a signal flare or anything."

"That's a good idea," Monkey said. "But what about us?"

"Money and Mantis, you are my reconnaissance," Tigress said. "Scout out any information you can glean; you're both best suited for this because of the five of us, you are the best at stealth, and can individually hold your own if you get into trouble.

"I'll hammer out the wider details once we have more information. You have your assignments, and I have mine. Wu Lien is going to start teaching Lotus style to the villagers, and I'll need to scope out places to do this in secret."

"Do you need any help?" Viper asked.

Tigress suddenly looked sheepish. "Well...actually, I also need to run a couple errands. _Someone_ has already outgrown his favorite pair of trousers, haven't you?" she asked her son, who only looked up at her with an innocent, questioning glance, whilst gumming his fist. When she looked back up at her friends, she made a face. "Hey, don't look at me like that! I may be a kick-butt kung fu warrior, but I'm a wife and mother too! And since Dalang is busy training, I'm the one who has to do the grocery shopping."

"Jeeze," Mantis said scathingly, "Do you also need to pick up his dry cleaning, too? How about cook his dinner and rub his feet when he gets home?"

"One more word out of you," Tigress warned, "and _you_ will be the one to babysit next time."

As Mantis did not particularly like the predatory glint in the infant tiger's eye, the insect promptly shut his mouth.

"Once again," Tigress said, "We need to be discrete. This means not telling anyone outside this room anything. Shifu and Sonam know, but for heaven's sake, don't discuss this with them! If you have to speak about it, talk about Dalang's training."

"What about our houseguests?" Crane asked. "They might notice something's amiss."

"Then lie," the tiger said. "The less Zang and his men know about this, the better."

* * *

Gao Ming kept his distance from his captain, and likewise advised Liu Yong and Hu Quon to stay away, at least until Zang's temper abated. The elephant knew it was bad news when the courier came back with a small scroll sealed with black wax. Zang was absolutely livid. It wasn't until later, when Zang had stormed off to fume in some deserted corner of the Jade Palace that the elephant, bay horse, and young tiger huddled around the discarded scroll to read what had so angered their fearless leader.

_Captain Zang Deshi,_

_It is with great distress we inform you of the passing of our comrade in arms, Colonel Zhou, and his entire Western Regiment. On the twenty-first day of the previous month, the Western Regiment moved out to the fabled 'Phoenix Mountain' to follow intelligence that the fugitive in question was hiding out in that locale. They set out, and never returned. Upon noticing their conspicuous absence, scouts were sent to the afore-mentioned locale and discovered that, at the top of the mountain, lay the charred ruins of what must have once been an impressive monastery. Amongst the ruins were the remains of our comrades. Working from conjecture, we can only assume that the fugitive in question is behind the attack and subsequent demise of the Western Regiment._

_PS: We have also sent along an artifact from the wreckage, curiously the only object that was in no way harmed by the fire. Please pass it along to Master Shifu of the Jade Palace; it is an object of great importance to him._

_With best regards and many condolences,_

_General Shan Yongshi.  
_

"The entire Western Regiment is dead?" Liu asked, astounded and absolutely horrified. "How? How could Tai Lung do all that damage?"

"What if he didn't?" Quon asked. "What if he wasn't there at all? There's no proof it's him, or even that he made it to that mountain. It could have been an accident."

"What proof do we need?" Gao demanded, raising his voice to the youth. "Since we got here, you have done nothing but cover for him, make excuses for him. Who's side are you really on, Cadet?"

"I am playing devil's advocate, Gao!" Quon suddenly snarled back. "There isn't a single damn situation that's black and white, despite what _you_ were taught!"

"Why you little insubordinate bas—"

"Both of you, ENOUGH," Liu snapped, physically putting himself between them. "Look, we're all a little on-edge right now, we got some awful news...we all had friends in the Western Regiment, so we are all understandably upset..." the bay horse corporal looked between the cadet and the lieutenant. "But lets not lose ourselves here. We still have a mission, and the captain expects us to _keep it together_."

Gao and Quon still fumed at each other, neither of them willing to back down. Liu knew this was severely out of character for the tiger, who was easily the meekest of the group. In recent days – since his recovery from his fever – the cadet had developed either one hell of a backbone, or one hell of a superiority complex; either way, he was nothing like the timid, quiet boy from before. The cadet had been questioning every order, and the bay horse had even caught the youth casting rebellious glares in Zang's direction. Liu didn't think much about it, but had told Gao about the interesting turn in Quon's behavior. Gao had brushed it off: "He's still getting over the head injury. He'll be back to his old timid self in no time."

But the livid, dangerous look in the tiger's eyes was making the elephant eat his words. This was not the Quon they knew. Something had changed, but they didn't know what. What the lieutenant and the corporal _did_ know...was that Quon was quickly becoming a liability.

"Who is this General Shan anyway?" Quon asked, staring at the signature. "He's not anyone I've heard of."

"That's no surprise," Gao snorted. "Way I hear it, you never left the academy library unless you were ordered to."

"_But_, Lieutenant, the cadet does have a point," Liu said haltingly. "We don't know who this general is. We don't know if he's on our side or not."

"He'd have to be," the elephant said. "Everyone in the army and their grannies hates Tai Lung."

"That's not what I'm worried about," Quon said. He lowered his voice after looking around and asked, "Be straight with me, can I trust you?"

"Of course you can," Liu said instantly.

"Then tell me: is this whole thing legit? Is this whole operation above-board?"

"Why do you need to know that?" Gao demanded.

Quon glared and hissed, "Because I'd like to know if I can look forward to a long, productive future in the military versus a military execution!"

"Captain Zang wouldn't have brought us into this if it wasn't legitimate," Gao said with finality.

The other two soldiers, however, were silent. Liu looked particularly concerned. The bay horse opened his mouth and whispered, "Honestly...I've had my doubts about that myself."

Gao groaned. "Not you, too!"

"This whole thing seems more for a black ops team, not cavalry-trained people like us," Liu said. "I was willing to overlook it before, because it paid so well...but Quon might have a point."

"Gao," Quon asked, point-blank, "Is Zang lying to us?"

"Why would I tell you, if I knew that?"

"Because you are his lieutenant!" Quon said. "He tells you everything!"

"Or he's supposed to..." Liu said guardedly.

"Both of you, knock it off before I report you," Gao snapped. "Questioning your commanding officer like that is a one-way ticket to court marshall, and I'm not risking it."

"So we are just to follow orders?" Quon said, in a tone Gao did not like.

"We follow orders because that is what we are trained to do. Any other questions, cadet?"

Quon paused, staring him down, then flatly said, "No sir."

"Good. Now I don't want to hear another word about this, got it?" The elephant quickly shut his mouth when he heard the palace servants coming down the hall towards them. "This doesn't leave this corner," he said shortly, then stomped off to look for Zang.

Liu and Quon waited until Gao had left before the bay horse turned to the tiger. "You were right."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't think this is above-board, either. Something is very fishy about this operation."

"Well what can we do? Compared to Zang and Gao, we're grunts!"

"Correction, _you_ are the grunt..." he said with a smirk.

"Corporal," Quon said with sincerity, "Forgive me if I come across as a humorless bastard, but I fail to see how this is a joking matter."

"Fine," Liu said, snorting air through his nostrils. The bay horse crossed his arms over his chest, thinking, then said, "I'll keep an eye on Gao, you stick to Zang. Of the three of us, he's less likely to harm you."

Quon gave him an incredulous look. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm serious. He likes you."

"Strange how that used to comfort me, and now it doesn't."

Liu stared the youth right in the eye. "I warned you about this when you joined us."

"So now you're throwing me right into the fray?" Quon asked harshly. "Sacrificing me for the cause?"

"Sacrifice? You? Pfft...your reputation as a thinker may have been what got you on this team in the first place...but I've heard the other rumors about you." Liu stared hard at him. "I'm pretty confident you can hold your own."

Quon couldn't help but squirm under his scrutiny. But he bit back. "Is that so? What exactly have you heard?"

Liu returned his hard stare with one of his own, not easy for a horse facing down an apex predator. "Just that you're a better fighter than anyone gives you credit. You can brush it off, saying you're more a scholar than a warrior...but we both know that's not the whole truth."

Quon blinked, but otherwise said nothing. Liu noticed how tense it had gotten between them, then sighed, "Go find the captain. You seem to calm him down, somehow. Until he's calm, he's going to be a right bastard to get along with."

"And the artifact?"

"What?"

"The only thing to survive that fire, that came with this letter."

"Oh, that. I gave it to the Palace historian to put in the Sacred Hall of Warriors. They've got someplace for something like that."

"What makes you think it's so special?"

"Quon, it's a bamboo staff that survived a huge fire...tell me that's not impressive enough to be something extraordinary."

* * *

Gao found Zang right where he expected him to be: perusing the Jade Palace's collection of kung fu scrolls. It was most telling to see the black war horse pouring over these documents, studying them, as if by examination he could get inside his enemy's head. He seemed more on-edge lately, more so than usual. The elephant didn't know what his next move would be. But if he played this game as well as he played chess, he was going to use a move no one expected.

"Sir?"

Zang's ear flicked in his direction. "Where have you been?"

"Bringing the corporal and the cadet up to speed. I let them read the letter."

"And?"

Gao hesitated.

Zang turned to level a glare at him. "Do they know?"

The elephant took a deep breath and said, "The cadet is suspicious. So is the corporal, but to a lesser extent. He's more willing to take orders, Quon isn't." He paused. "If I can speak plainly, sir, the tiger's becoming a liability."

Zang sighed through his nose. "Pity, too, he would have made a fine officer. You have told no one else?"

"No sir."

"Good. I have a mission for you, and it needs to be carried out as soon as possible." He set the scroll in his hands down onto an old desk. Gao had never noticed it before, but it bore the marks of perhaps generations of students who had studied here. A couple places had been gored with what looked like frustrated claw-marks. The scroll in the black horse's hands, however, surprised him.

"Nerve attacks?"

"Tai Lung's specialty," Zang said. His tone betrayed that he had underestimated his enemy in this regard. "However, I have found a way around it. The nerve attack can only be done when the assailant has the utmost concentration. Anything that breaks that concentration will render him useless. Use the right distraction, and he will be destroyed."

Now Zang took something off his belt and thrust it into Gao's hands. The elephant looked down at the service-officer's knife still in its sheath. When he looked back at his leader, Zang explained,

"As abhorrent a beast as Tai Lung is, he has one true weakness: his wife."

Gao thought about what he was being asked – no, ordered – to do. He didn't think long. "What do you want me to do about her?"

"Not just her...her and her child."

Gao swallowed, feeling a chill.

Zang continued, "Take away that which makes a monster into a man, the man becomes a monster once again. When Tai Lung is a monster, he gets sloppy. He also may be more willing to submit to us if she were out of the picture. Do what you wish: kidnap her, hold her for ransom, though I would prefer you kill her and her unholy spawn. One Tai Lung is enough for this world. 'Twould be better for us all if they were wiped off the face of the earth. You have your orders. I trust you will follow through on them?"

This was Gao's chance. His chance to join with the cadet and the corporal, his chance to stick to his convinctions. He gave Zang his answer:

"Yes sir, I'll follow them through to the letter."

* * *

Mei Xing was cooking. It was after dinner, but she was still hungry. Damn what the doctors said, she wanted rice pudding, so godsdammit, she was going to get it. She added some dried berries to the thick mix of rice and cream, her stomach rumbling with anticipation. She hadn't had this in months and for some reason, she really wanted it, and wanted it right now.

When she turned to chop up an apple to throw in, she stopped to find Shifu in the kitchen's doorway. She didn't know it was him at first, so she held up the kitchen knife for defense. She only lowered it when she saw his face: he looked pale, and very disturbed.

"Hey!" she said. "Are you okay? You don't look so good."

"I'm...afraid I'm not feeling well at all," he said, slowly sinking onto a low stool. His hands were shaking a little.

Mei Xing frowned and handed him the apple she was about to chop up. "Here, you might need it. Getting a little fiber and sugar should make you feel better."

"I'm afraid I can't stomach it."

"So what's wrong?"

Shifu looked right at Mei Xing and made his decision. "We're moving you, tonight, out of this house."

"What?" she asked. "Are you crazy? I'm in no condition to go anywhere!"

"We don't have a choice in the matter. You can't stay here any longer. I've had my suspicions before, but now I'm certain..." he sighed and clasped her hand. "Zang is planning to hurt you. He's planning to hurt the baby. He's planning to hurt _both_ of you," he emphasized. "And if I don't do something to get you to safety, he'll succeed, and not only will Tai Lung never forgive me if something happened to you, I would never forgive myself."

Mei Xing was paler now than he had ever seen her. She held the jade pendant around her neck, and held his hand in a vice-like grip. But when she spoke, her voice didn't waver: "I'm not going anywhere."

Shifu wasn't sure he had heard her correctly. "Not leaving? Mei Xing, maybe I wasn't being clear enough..."

She surprised him when she growled, "Shifu, I am pregnant, not stupid, I heard you the first time! I'm not leaving."

"I urge you to reconsider..."

"Fuck you, I'm staying."

Well, this was not what he was expecting. For so long, Mei Xing had been so pliable and willing to follow anything the doctors and midwives told her, so concerned was she for the safety of her baby, that even a gentle suggestion for their well-being would be enough to convince her. Now, however, Mei Xing looked adamant. "I'm not leaving."

"He's going to kill you, I heard him give his man the order to do so!" Shifu reasoned.

"Let the sonofabitch try."

"You are in no condition to fight him!"

The glare she leveled at him chilled him to the bone. "Shifu," she said with perfect calm as she started clearing the counter. "You are my father-in-law, correct?"

"Yes..." he said, not sure where she was going with this.

"And am I to assume you only have my best interests at heart?"

"Of course! I look at you as my own daughter!"

"And am I also to assume that you respect me as I respect you?"

"Yes, of course."

"Good. Now respect _this_—" and with this, she picked up the chef's knife and turned to the red panda, fury blazing in her eyes. "Ever since I conceived, I have been ordered around and forced to do things that I knew were contrary to my beliefs, but I did it for my baby's safety. I ignored my instincts, ignored everything I was taught and believed, and became a perfect obedient wife. And you know what? I became _exactly_ what my asshole ex-husband always wanted...and _I will be gods-damned_ if I let you push me around again, you mangy tree rat!"

The knife was shaking in her hand, her knuckles white from the pressure. "You want to tell me again what you think I should do, without getting any input from _me_? _I'm_ the one carrying this kid, Shifu, _I'm_ the one who's going to push it out, and _I'm_ going to be the one to raise it, and if I'm going to be a mother, then _who the hell are you to tell me how to raise and protect my family_?"

Shifu took a step back as Mei Xing raged, her fur standing on end as she snapped her fangs and viciously snarled, "Since he got here, he has called me a whore, a bad wife, and an even worse daughter, an embarassment to my ancestors. And now he has the _stones_ to say he's doing the world a favor by wiping out Tai Lung's entire line? If Zang wants to take me down, I'm taking that son-of-a-whoring mule down with me! GOT IT?"

By now, Shifu had learned the hard way why Tai Lung steered clear of Mei Xing when she was in a bad mood. And it seemed the stress from the pregnancy coupled with the stress of her husband being so far away and further complicated by closer threats had finally succeeded in making her...well, snap.

He quickly covered, "I'm sorry, you're right, of course. I was concerned for your safety, and while I still think you should go into hiding, I will respect your decision and stand behind you every step of the way."

Mei Xing stabbed the knife into the wooden countertop and exhaled heavily, still seething.

"I'm staying," she said.

"Okay," he said.

"I need to go knit something."

"Please do."

She took the rice pudding off the heat and set it aside to let it cool. When she walked away to do exactly as she suggested, Shifu shakily sat back in a chair and glanced over at the knife, still quivering from the force it had been slammed into the counter. At that moment, Tigress came into the kitchen from putting Shang down for bed. "What happened? I heard yelling...Master? Are you alright? You look pale."

"Do you have any _baijiu_?"

"Why? Since when do you drink?"

"Since my very pregnant daughter-in-law bit my head off while wielding your husband's biggest knife."

"Oh." She paused, then offered, "In that case, you're going to need something stronger than wine."

* * *

A/N: If Dalang's fighting style sounds familiar, there's a reason for it. I know that Mongolia has its own form of boxing/wrestling, but you know, that wasn't badass enough for me :) . So, for the hell of it, I threw in some elements of Krav Maga, an Israeli combat style developed in the 1940's to repell Nazis from Jewish neighborhoods. Seriously, Krav Maga is insane, hard core, brutal, and did I mention insane? All the sorts of hits that are otherwise illegal in organized fighting (head, below the belt, eyes, mouth, etc.) are perfectly legal, and, even encouraged. I figured that growing up in an environment like Dalang did, he had to know something that was less well-developed and spiritual as kung fu, and something more akin to close-quarters urban fighting, which was what Krav Maga was intended to be. That said, I don't think that Krav Maga is a _bad_ type of fighting; as a matter of fact, if I were not weak, puny, and pasty pale with skinny little bones that would get smashed to bits, I'd like to learn Krav Maga, just for the sheer badassery of it. :D

Mei Xing's desire to knit to cool off is, yes, a jab at myself. I knit to relieve stress. It's a thing, I can't quite explain it.


	17. Chapter 17: Cloud Cover

A Chapter for those who have waited so patiently...and conveniently posted right as the sequel came out! So...new material, new info that throws my mini-verse out of whack, but I'll roll with it. (Yes, I did see the movie; BF and I just got back from date night, and for a sequel, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Lord Shen made a wickedly cool villain! ...and I suppose coming from the woman who brought you such personalities as Jiao Shen, Rong Lang and Asmodei Koshchei, that might say something. Gary Oldman FTW; _great_ casting choice!) But enough of my rambling, on with the chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, it belongs to DreamWorks Animation Studios. All Original Characters belong to me, so please don't use them without my permission.

* * *

Chapter 17: Cloud Cover

* * *

Sung was not having a very good day. Well, to be fair, he rarely had good days. He rarely had decent days anymore. Since his inn had unofficially become the Thieves' Inn, and since his clientele had gone from respectable traveler to scary beyond all reason, the rabbit didn't have good days anymore. So it said something that this day was, in particular, a bad day.

The bandits, thieves, and assassins arrived early, and en masse. The first ones came down from the mountains, a flood of them, each one hardier-looking than the last, led by a massive wolf that nightmares were made of. Ominously, rather than enter, they camped on the shores of Compass Lake, and Sung and his family watched them very, very carefully. They didn't make much money in the hospitality business, so it was unlikely that they would be robbed. And if these outlaws intended to kill them, they would have already done so. No, the worst was yet to come.

By mid-day, another group arrived. Twenty-thousand, easily. Twenty Thousand outlaws. It was making Sung's long-eared head spin. By nightfall, another group had arrived, led by none other than the Wu Sisters themselves. He feared a battle but it didn't come. In fact, the leaders of each army greeted each other civilly, if not with a little more emotion than most. They seemed to be waiting for something...

By dawn the next day, Sung the rabbit innkeeper got his answer when he was rudely awoken by a pounding on his door. Heartrate accelerated, thinking not for the first time that this would be the day he finally joined his ancestors, the rabbit quickly dressed and hopped to the door, opening it a crack so he didn't betray how terrified he actually was. He was surprised by what he saw.

It was a wolf, gray like the majority of them, but he was shorter, leaner, and there was something about his air and the way he held himself that made him less of a threat than his brethren, of which there now had to be forty thousand at least camped on the shore.

The young wolf – gods, he was scarcely out of adolescence! - smiled at the rabbit and apologized, "Yeah, sorry about the crowd, we're just passing through. Bad famine up north, you know, so we're heading to Guangdong. I'm Lang. Do you mind if we come in?"

Sung _did_ mind, and quite a bit! But as disarming as this lupine youth may have been, he wasn't stupid enough to open his door more than necessary. But this Lang kid didn't give him much of a choice, as the wolf pleaded, "Sir, please, I've been traveling with my master, and he's been sick these last few days. Please, do you have a spare room? Any space, any bed at all."

Sung was well aware of the hierarchy in wolf packs – a good number of packs passed through his doors on a regular basis – and as rough as wolves could be, the rabbit was perpetually impressed by just how loyal they could be to their leaders and how much they – dare he think it – loved them. And this kid _did_ look like he had been through hell and back from whatever place he had come from – bloodied, hastily bandaged, bruised and scratched gods only knew how many times – and thus his master had to be in worse shape. So seeing the sincere worry on Lang's youthful, puppy-like face made Sung relent. The rabbit opened his door and waved the youth in. "Quickly, come in. Will your master need medicine?"

"Yes, please, and bandages if you can manage it."

Sung would have questioned further until he saw just who his "master" was. Leaning heavily against another wolf was perhaps the scariest creature Sung had ever seen. And he had seen quite a few scary souls walk through his door. Though he looked old, and was clearly wounded, the golden-furred leopard was a born fighter, and an even better killer; this he could tell just by looking at him. His clothes were foreign, as was the language he was undoubtedly cursing in...

"_Chort voz-mi_! _Suka_..._Padla_...!" he swore, holding his free paw over his bloodied shoulder, from which an arrow shaft still stood from. His other arm was draped across the other wolf's shoulders as he stumbled into the inn.

"Yeah, yeah," the other wolf said as he helped the Amur Leopard over the threshold, "Sukas and Padlas for everybody, watch yer step, boss man."

Asmodei Koshchei stubbed his toe on the threshold and let out another string of Russian curses, which Lang declined to translate for the rabbit. It was safe to say that Lang's instruction in Russian had also been improving, and though his Proper Russian still required a bit of work, thanks to Asmodei's injury, the youth had gotten a pretty quick crash-course in the coarser Street Russian.

Sung led them to the closest free room that he had. It was the off-season, now that winter was quickly approaching, so the rabbit had quite a few rooms available. But the state of the leopard's injuries (and colorful language) told the rabbit to get him to a comfortable bed as soon as possible.

Lan Duo carefully eased Koshchei into the bed and helped him lay back. Lang reached for his bag and produced a few gold coins. "Will this cover a room and board for a week?"

"T-this will cover a m-m-month!" the rabbit stammered. The stutter was a learned habit, not one he was born with. The more he stuttered, he found, the less likely his patrons considered him a threat, and usually left him alone.

"A month? Great! Listen, would you also get some food for him? Asmodei, anything you want in particular?"

At the time Lang posed this question, Lan Duo had peeled away the square of blood-stained cloth pressed against Koshchei's wound, taking fur and dried blood away as well. The leopard let out another string of Russian words. Lang smiled and nodded to the rabbit, "He'll have your Number Four special with white rice. My friend and I will have the Number..."

"Three," Duo spoke up. "Fried rice for me."

"Ditto for me," Lang said, digging into the money bag again.

"_Yeba-tsa SRA-tsa_!" Koshchei said, cringing again as Duo tried to dig out the arrow.

"Um..." Sung began to say.

"How about you throw in some bean buns for the master," Lang covered, "and you _not_ ask me to translate?"

"Bean buns on the house tonight."

"Good man. Oh, and any wolves asking where I am, just send them up here, 'kay? Thanks."

Lang waited until the rabbit had quit the room before locking the door behind him. "How bad is it?"

"Looks pretty bad," Duo said, "But won't know for sure until we get the arrowhead out. What's he saying?"

"You don't want to know what he's saying, trust me." Lang knelt next to Koshchei, which was a very daring move considering the state the feline was in. Then, without flinching, the young wolf reached in with his small claws and extracted the arrowhead, using his claws like tweezers. The leopard's claws dug into the bed, shredding the coverlet and he hissed in pain as Lang pulled the arrowhead out. The offending article now out of his shoulder, Koshchei finally lay back, the pained look starting to leave his face, his black claws retracting. With a heavy sigh of relief, Koshchei said whilst patting Lang's hand, "_Bolshoe spasibo, malchik..._"

"You're welcome, _starik_." He earned a warm smile in return.

Duo ran his hands over his face and blew out a breath through pursed lips. "Well, screwed the pooch on that one..."

"We didn't know how many were there," Lang said shortly. "You said it yourself, that was a _small_ guard outpost Tan Lan went to!"

"Boys, boys..." Koshchei said, holding up a bloodied claw to silence them. "Has been too long vitout silence...is not time to fight."

The door slammed open, allowing an enraged Bao Nu to barge in. "Where the _fuck_ is Zi Hao?"

Koshchei's palm hit his forehead and he muttered under his breath. Duo stood between Bao Nu and the bed. "Bao, relax, he hasn't arrived yet."

"Damn idiot better be _dead_ after that screw-up!" the wolf roared, his big voice booming throughout the inn. "We've been chased like dogs all over those damn mountains and only _just_ got those imperial assholes off our tails!"

"It's not Hao's fault," Lang said. "It's mine. This was poor planning. I didn't account for there being so many."

"_None_ of us knew there would be that many," Duo pointed out, coming to Lang's defense before Bao Nu could pounce on him.

"Ve underestimate enemy," Koshchei spoke up, wincing from the pain in his shoulder. "And enemy surprise us. Ve forget ourselves, and ve get hurt. Is important not to underestimate enemy in Valley of Peace."

"What's to underestimate?" Bao Nu asked. "They're farmers and merchants. It'll be easy to take them!"

"The farmers and villagers maybe," Lang pointed out, "But you're forgetting about the two different kung fu schools there, too. Asmodei's right, we can't move forward unless we know exactly what we're getting into."

"Lang is right, also," Koshchei said. "Ve haff been chased like fox into hole. Is time to bide, sit, vait, and vatch...vhen Vu Sister get here, send them into Valley, send group to spy, get eh, vhat is vord..."

"Reconnaissance?" Duo offered.

"_Da_, that."

Lang noticed the pale, painful look on the leopard's face and turned to Duo and Bao Nu, "Can one of you get some first aid stuff? We need to get this patched up."

"Yeah, we'll go," Duo said, grabbing Bao's arm. "We need to find Wang and Jiu anyway. You need anything, Lang?"

"No, I'm good, thanks."

Duo led the larger wolf out of the room and closed the door behind them. He led him down the hall in complete silence until they were well out of earshot before the bandit turned to the wrathful animal. "Okay, Bao, from here on out, do _not_ piss off the kid."

"What?" the taller wolf stared and laughed. "You're kidding. The _runt_?"

"I'm serious, man, he's _cracked_. Koshchei's gotten to him."

"You're insane."

"No, _Lang's_ insane, or he's just about there! Do you know what he did to Lan's body?"

Bao Nu noticed how pale Duo had gotten, and how insistent the wolf had become lately. Bao, who had always known his packmate to be the most careless and apathetic creature he'd ever met, now saw that something had spooked him, and whatever it was, he had better listen.

"What'd he do?" he asked, scarcely above a whisper, as if he feared the answer.

Duo struggled a few times to start, but when he finally blurted it out: "He eviscerated him", Bao's answer was, "So? We've done that plenty of times in battle."

"Yeah, to _kill_. But Tan Lan was already dead! Lang cut him open and played with his organs."

"He _what_?" Had he heard that right?

"_Played_ with them! Like they were bouncing balls...or...or _toys_, godsdammit! And later, he wouldn't shut up about it! He _liked_ doing it. He liked cutting people open."

Bao tried to shrug it off, but he was still unnerved by this information. He recalled what Tan Lan had always said about "the quiet ones"...

"He's just coming into his own, that's all. It was his first kill. He's getting his feet wet," the massive wolf said.

"Don't you get it? Don't you see?" Duo insisted. "Two months ago, if someone told you that the _Omega_ would rise up and kill one of the finest assassins in our group, and _brutally_ at that, then desecrate his corpse just for shits and giggles, would you've believed it?"

"Well, no..."

"Exactly! I'm telling you, for your own safety, don't do _anything_ to piss him off. You saw what he did to Zi Hao – he had good reason to beat the shit outta him. He had good reason to kill Tan Lan. You're the strongest warrior we've got...don't give him a reason to kill you, too."

Bao Nu snorted. "Don't worry about it. I'm not, and you shouldn't either. You're on his good side."

Duo couldn't help but think to himself as he went to get medical supplies, _Yeah, but for how long?_

* * *

Lang, of course, was also worried about staying on someone's good side. This someone, however, was more likely to kill him if he really screwed up.

"_Damn him!"_ Koschei swore in Russian, _"Damn him and all his ancestors!"_

"_It wasn't Hao's fault," _Lang said in near-perfect Russian. He had, after all, been learning well under Koshchei's tutelage. _"I'm the one that set it up. I set it up, and I failed."_

"_No, __**he**__ failed,"_ the leopard pointed out. _"He failed to die like you intended."_

Lang sighed through his nose. _"So how do I handle this? He's still alive, out there, but I don't know if he'll come back this way or try to become our enemy...damn, I should have killed him while I had the chance."_

"_You know best. This is your plan."_

Lang snarled at him, _"This is __**your**__ plan too! You have something to gain in this as much as I do!"_

"_Not as much,"_ the old leopard said with a pointed look at the wolf. _"Not as much as you have to gain."_

Lang got up and started pacing the room. _"I can still keep up the act, act like I look up to him, worship him...I really want to make him suffer, but I don't know how."_

"_You don't know?"_

"_I haven't thought that far ahead,"_ Lang said sheepishly._ "I've plotted how to get him there, but not what I'm actually going to do. __**Blyad**__!"_

Koshchei thought carefully, staring out into space. _"You wanted to make him suffer as you suffered."_

"_Right."_

"_How did you suffer the most?"_

"_I was humiliated."_

"_How were you humiliated?"_

"_What does that have to do with it?"_ When Lang looked over at Koshchei, he saw the great predatory grin creeping across the old cat's black lips.

"Everything, _malchik_, it haff everything to do vit it."

* * *

"_Aiya_! What the hell happened to you?"

Zi Hao's eventual arrival at Compass Lake was cause for concern. The plan to hold off the Imperial Army had backfired. The fifth of the army that had stayed to fight had been decimated, and the ones that yet lived limped into camp the day after Koshchei and Lang's group had arrived. The ones that were left were badly beaten, bruised and cut, and many further had died along the route. This of course meant that the black wolf was not in the best of moods.

He turned his gaze over to Wu Zhu, and brusquely said, "I don't want to talk about it."

"Lang and Koshchei want to talk to you," Wu Tian said, and Hao didn't like the sound of her tone. He also didn't like the looks everyone was giving him, as if he was to blame for everything that went wrong with this mission. It was Lang's stupid idea! But no manner of complaint would get him out of trouble, and now he was regretting everything he'd ever done or said to Lang, now that he knew what being an Omega felt like.

He limped into the inn and was directed towards Koshchei's room, where he found the fearless leader sitting up in bed and struggling to eat with chopsticks, a skill he had never succesfully mastered. When the leopard spotted the black wolf, he set down his bowl and glared at him.

"Close door," the leopard said.

Zi Hao swallowed hard as he obeyed perhaps the scariest order he'd ever received. It was just the two of them in the room. Hao wondered what had become of Lang; he really needed an ally right now.

"Ve give you simple job," Koshchei began, tone even but with a growl hidden in every word. He was pissed off. "_Much_ simple. Kill army men, many as possible, then join group. Tell me, vhat happen?"

Oh, he was very pissed off.

Zi Hao swallowed again and said, "I followed Lang's plan, but we didn't think there'd be so-"

"You did _not_ follow plan, you come up vit your own!" Koshchei roared. "You come up vit own plan and you fail! Is clear you _not_ think! Is clear you haff no brain! Idiot _padla_!"

The black wolf got angry and shouted back, "It was a stupid plan to begin with! Lure them into the open? They're too smart to fall for that!"

"_Ya te-bye primu kalgan, yesli nye slye-Dishza myet loi!_"

He had no idea what he'd said, but while his brain told him to shut the hell up, the synapse to follow through on that command wasn't firing. "You should be mad at _him_, not me!"

"I should haff kill you long time ago!" Koshchei said, whilst unsheathing his long black claws. "I vill kill you myself..." and just as suddenly as he had lost his temper, his mood shifted to a calmer, more composed feline: "but, _malchik_ like you, so for him, I no kill you."

Hao blinked. "Huh?"

"Lang like you. Vould be most unhappy if I kill you. I like making _malchik_ happy, so, I let you live. _For naow,_" he emphasized.

Someone knocked at the door then Lang poked his head in. "Everything okay in here? I heard you yell—Hao! You made it!"

Zi Hao was astounded. Lang actually looked happy to see him. The smaller wolf dashed into the room and began fussing over him. "What happened? We thought you were right behind us. The Wu Sisters told me we lost a few thousand men."

"Yeah, yeah we did." Hao stepped carefully. He could feel Koshchei's glare on his back. "The army had reinforcements."

Lang's face fell. "Damnit, I should've thought of that..."

"Hey, don't worry about it. None of us knew. I mean, it was a good plan..." What the hell was he doing? Was he actually sucking up to the kid? Or...crap, did he feel sorry for him? Was he really moved by the disappointed look in the kid's eyes? "...just...shit went down."

Koshchei made a contemptuous noise in the back of his throat.

Lang nodded in understanding. "Yeah...and I'm sorry about all that. Listen, let me make it up to you. I'll buy you dinner, get you patched up. I need some time to think about our next step."

Hao allowed the youth to lead him out of the room. When Lang closed the door behind him, he asked, "What did Koshchei say to you?"

"That he'd kill me."

"Well, that's no surprise. He's had it out for you for a while." Then Lang slapped a hand over his mouth. "Shit, I said too much! Man, he's gonna be pissed at me..."

Hao stopped him. "Wait, wait...he's been trying to kill me?"

Lang glanced at the closed door and dropped his voice to a whisper. "He's had a plan brewing for a while, since your battle with the army went south... I've been trying to calm him down, but I don't know how safe you'll be if you stick around here much longer."

"What's he going to do to me?" Zi Hao was, like all bullies, somewhat of a coward, though he would never admit it. As is common knowledge, a bully is only a bully until a bigger bully comes along...and Koshchei certainly fit that bill.

"I don't know," Lang whispered back, "But don't worry, I want to make sure you stick around. Just give me some time to think of a plan, and I'll get back to you." Then he smiled and handed the black wolf a few coins. "Here, go help yourself to something, get a drink, whatever you want. It's not much, but I hope a hot meal helps..."

And just like that, Hao was done in. He really hated to admit it, but he was wrong about the kid. And now he felt really shitty for hurting him as much as he had. "Why are you doing this, after the way I treated you?" he finally asked. "You could've let him kill me, but you're standing here sticking up for me. Why?"

Lang shrugged. "I dunno...I guess I could be petty and give that whole eye for an eye thing...but there's enough bad blood. Yeah, you treated me like dirt, but all I wanted was for you to respect me, and, well, I guess beating the crap outta you is what it took, right?"

"Uh, right."

"Okay!" the small wolf said with a smile. "You go on ahead, I'd better tame the wild beast," he said, thumbing over his shoulder at the Amur leopard's room. Once Hao had left, Lang leaned back against the door, crossed his arms, and allowed himself a smile.

"Smooth. I gotta say, I'm pretty proud of you."

Lang smirked at Duo, who had returned with a meal for them both. He shrugged nonchalantly. "What can I say? I'm learning from the best. Thanks," he said, accepting a breakfast bun from his mentor.

"So what's the plan from here on out? You figured out what you're gonna do with him yet?" the taller wolf said, taking a big bite out of his breakfast pastry.

The lupine youth shrugged. "He'd make a nice throw rug."

"_Lang_," Duo admonished.

"_What_? I can use that joke. No one's got ownership on that joke."

"Sure kid." The larger gray wolf took another huge bite out of his own breakfast bun and chewed thoughtfully. "You know where he's going, don't you?"

"Yup," Lang said, swallowing quickly. "I'm sending him into the Valley with the Wu Sisters. They'll keep him alive as long as I ask them to. This way, my revenge is on _my_ terms, not Koshchei's."

"Think the old cat's okay with that plan?"

"He doesn't know you have a stake in it, too."

"Why haven't you told him?"

"Duo, look at what's happened in the last week. When do ya think I've had the time?"

"Point taken. So _are_ you going to tell him?"

"Yeah, soon. Not gonna tell him everything, mind, but I'm gonna give him a breakdown of my ideas."

"Which are?"

"Let him get his ass kicked by the Furious Five, then he comes running back to me to lick his wounds...then I strike."

"And where do _I _fit in with this revenge plan?"

"You get to be the first to beat him senseless when he fails."

"Why can't I do that now?"

Lang glared at him.

"_What_?" Duo said defensively. "I've wanted to beat his ass for a while!"

"What is your beef with Hao, anyway? You never told me."

Duo swallowed hard, choking a little on his food. When he regained composure, he looked down at the shorter wolf and feigned, "Eh, you don't wanna know."

"C'mon, it can't be any worse than what he did to me."

Duo stared at him a moment longer, then turned his attention to his half-eaten pastry. After a long pause, he asked, "Remember when I told you to know when to keep your trap shut?"

Lang nodded.

"Well...that came from personal experience. Hao told me something in confidence, and I accidentally blabbed to someone about it, and word got around... He told me all was forgiven, until I told Hao something I shouldn't have...and he used it against me."

Lang waited until Duo had fallen completely silent before he asked, softly, "What happened?"

Duo sighed through his nose. "I told him I was claustrophobic...still am, I hate small spaces. My parents died when I was really young, so my uncle raised me, but he loved his own kids more than me—happy, well-adjusted up-bringing, right? He used to lock me in the broom closet when I acted out, he'd leave me in there for days, sometimes. I hated it. Dark, damp, spiders and bugs crawling all over me..." he violently shuddered just from the memory of it, almost dropping what was left of his meal in the process. However, he quickly collected himself, and apologized, "Sorry, thought I was over it...

"Anyway, one day, Hao decided to teach me a lesson for spilling the beans on him. He showed me this trunk he'd pillaged from a raid, and like in one of those horror stories, he threw me in there, slammed down the lid and left me there."

By now, Lang was even more horrified than before. He knew Hao was sadistic, but he didn't expect this! "What happened?" he asked again.

"He played on my next biggest fear: being buried alive. He dragged the trunk outside, tossed me in a hole and started throwing dirt on me...he didn't let me out until I begged like a dog." He took in another deep breath and let it out shakily. "I snapped. I haven't been the same since. You think I'm cynical, couldn't care less about other people, yeah, no one's ever given a flying fuck about me, so why should I? I keep my distance now, don't let anyone in...cause, shit, look what happened the last time I did."

"Why would he do something so awful? What was his big bad secret that he..."

And suddenly, Duo grinned maliciously. "You really wanna know?"

Lang leaned in to hear what his mentor had to say. He swore his heart stopped when Duo whispered back: "He is—literally—a bastard son of a bitch. His father was a wolf, but his mother was an unmarried dog. Zi Hao's a half-breed."

* * *

"Hot diggity damn! I got it!"

Koshchei gave up trying to get a handle on the chopsticks and just decided to start spooning food from his bowl into his mouth with his claws. "Got vhat?"

Lang answered in Russian: _"I know how to get Hao! Duo just told me...Hao's a half-breed!"_

The leopard lowered his bowl. _"What?"_

"_Yes, a real hybrid!"_

"_Ah, one of those self-hating types..."_

"_Exactly! See, here's my plan...I send him into the valley with the Wu Sisters—"_

"_Which is a fine idea, by the by."_

"_-Thank you, and so, when they get there, you know he's going to do something stupid, he gets his ass beaten, then he comes crawling back to us for help like he just did with the army...so then we humiliate him."_

"_And this Lan Duo has a stake, too, eh?"_

Lang stopped, swallowing hard. _"You heard all that?"_

"_I may be old, but I'm not deaf. That poor man..."_ Koshchei said, shaking his spotted head. _"Horrible, the things he suffered."_

"_Yeah, no wonder Duo's so closed-off. So...if it's good with you, could he get the first shot?"_

"_You don't want it?"_

"_Not anymore. Not after what he went through. He's the one who got the idea of this in my head, and you nurtured it. He's wanted this revenge longer than I have...he should get the first_ hit."

"_If that's how you feel_," the old leopard said with a shrug. "_We need a back-up plan this time_."

"_Don't worry about it. I've got one..._" he sat down at the edge of the bed and began speaking in Chinese again. "I got a plan for how to get our spies into the Valley without arousing suspicion."

"Haow?" Koshchei asked.

"They'll need money for the trip."

"Da, they vill..."

"So, kill one of the outlaws, collect a bounty, and there you go, plenty to go around."

Koshchei narrowed his eyes at his protege, and was surprised when Lang laughed. "Oh gods, not you! C'mon, I can't lose you! No, it'll be someone useless...someone we can afford to miss..."

"Or someone who is too dangerous to keep around."

Lang narrowed his eyes at the leopard. "Who did you have in mind?"

* * *

"Hey Bao?"

"Yeah?" Bao Nu had been settling into the room he shared with Yu Wang, Xu Jiu, and now Zi Hao. It felt nice to sleep in a real bed again, though he could have done without Xu Jiu's snoring, or Yu Wang's tossing and turning all night. Bao Nu kept all his possessions in one bag, which he was packing up to make sure that everything was there; sharing a room with known criminals made one wary of what was left sitting around. He hated roommates. Lang, however, he didn't mind so much. The kid was still scrawny, so not much of a threat, and, he admitted, it felt kind of nice to have someone hero-worship him as much as the youth did.

Lang poked his head into the room, then sneaked in and closed the door behind him. He kept his hands behind his back, lowered his head and ears in a show of meekness; even around the larger wolf, Lang still regressed into his Omega habits. "Can I ask you a personal question?"

"How personal?"

"Do you have a bounty on your head?"

As far as personal questions went, that wasn't so bad. In fact, the bounty on his head was something the huge wrathful wolf was proud of. Bao Nu smirked triumphantly. "Sure do."

Interested, Lang perked up. "Yeah? What'd you do to get it?"

"What do you think? Ever hear of the Massacre of Wei?"

Lang's eyes widened. "No way!"

Bao buffed his claws on his tunic. "Yeah, Wei. That was me. Fifty dead in ten minutes, not my best time, but not too shabby anyway."

"No kidding. How much did you get for that?"

"What, the bounty? Used to be five thousand on my head, but after the massacre, a cool twenty."

Lang let out a low, appreciative whistle. "Twenty thousand! Wow, no wonder White Wolf wanted you to work for him. I don't think the bounty on his head was that big."

"Damn right it wasn't. Why do you ask?"

Lang opened his mouth to reply, paused, then sheepishly shook his head. "Nah, it's stupid..."

"You've said stupider things, kid. Out with it."

Lang hesitated, then wondered aloud, "Well, I figure if anyone knows the answer to this, it would be you... What would I have to do to get _that_ notorious?"

Bao shrugged. "Easiest way to get notorious is to kill somebody who's already notorious. That's what the Jiao did; cleared out a rival clan to get the upper hand."

"Yeah," Lang said, nodding. He looked at the massive wolf and asked, "Do you think I have a chance at ever being as notorious as you?"

Bao Nu laughed at this, then settled into a low chuckle, "As me? Shit, not by a long shot."

"Really? Killing Tan Lan like I did..."

"Yeah, I saw..."

"Did you?"

Bao stared at him. "Kid, I was there. I saw what..."

Lang grinned. "So Duo didn't tell you?"

"Didn't tell me what?" Now Bao Nu couldn't shake the feeling that he had walked into something...something he didn't like. Duo had warned him about the disection, but Bao had thought he was kidding around. Now he wished he was. The grin on Lang's puppy-like face greatly disturbed him, but not as much as what the youth said next:

"I cut him open."

For some reason, this made him shiver. "What, he was still alive after you stabbed him?"

"No, he was dead," he said matter-of-factly. "But I cut him open. I always wondered what people looked like on the inside...makes me curious if all wolves look the same on the inside. That's what the village wise man used to say: 'though our appearances are different, inside we are all the same'."

The bigger wolf made a face. "I don't think that's what he meant."

Lang shrugged. "Oh well, I've got time to test that theory. Maybe I'll kill that rabbit to see if his innards look any different...aside from smaller."

"You've been spending too much time with that leopard," Bao Nu huffed. Then he turned his back on the young wolf, slouching down to pick up a knife that had cluttered to the floor from his bag.

"You know Bao, you're right," Lang said. "I _have_ been spending a lot of time with Asmodei."

When Bao Nu straightened up, he didn't think about Lang's statement. Because the axe had already severed his head from his neck.

Lang held the axe in both hands, staring as Bao Nu's head fell to the floor with a loud thunk and rolled a little ways before coming to a stop by the wall. The body crumbled to the floor a second later. Blood gushed from the severed stump of a neck, getting all over Lang's clothes, but the young wolf kept his eyes trained on the head in the corner. The look on the dead wolf's face was more curious than horrified. He hadn't even had time to know what was happening to him.

"Damn," Lang cursed, dropping the axe. Then he took off his shirt, wiping still-hot blood from his face and hands before throwing the sullied article in the fire. He picked up the burlap sack that held Bao's personal effects and dumped it onto the floor. A few scattered weapons, mostly knives, which were always handy. Lang thrust them, sheathes and all, into his belt. Then there were little things, worthless, really, but perhaps they had meant something to Bao Nu: A carved comb with a peony blossom, a couple of the teeth missing, likely an hierloom; a red ribbon, tied in a neat bow around a rag doll's neck. Artifacts of Bao's former life, or whatever had been left of it. In an earlier time, Lang might have wondered about the stories these items carried, but now he didn't care. He threw these items into the fire as well.

The sack completely empty, he trotted over and grabbed Bao's head by the fur and thrust it into the bag, closing it tightly. He then stripped Bao's bed of the sheets and wrapped them around the corpse. Using a few stones and an iron, he weighed down the shroud, then struggled to toss it out the window. Bao Nu's remains sank to the bottom of the lake with only the slightest splash and disappeared to the bottom, the last time anyone would ever see it.

Lang quickly changed into a clean shirt, then he opened the door and stepped out into the hall, locking the door behind him and taking the only key. He couldn't risk Yu Wang and Xu Jiu to find the evidence before he had cleaned up; cleaning up the blood would have to wait. It was a good thing he gave them duties to attend to with their shares of the army; it would keep them busy until he got back. He would be gone a while. The next guard post was at least two miles away.

* * *

One thing Yu Wang was known for, aside from being a notorious assassin, was being an equally notorious womanizer. He had zeroed in on the Wu Sisters almost as soon as laid eyes on them. They had plenty going for them, of course: hot, well-built, flexibile...all the things that really mattered in a woman, naturally. The problem seemed that he had too much competition. He never liked being surrounded by so many men; it made, ahem, "conquests" that much harder. Women usually flocked to the more muscular Bao Nu, but slight-built males like Yu Wang were often passed over in favor of males who were clearly biologicially superior. Things like personality and intelligence had little to do with mating, when it got right down to it.

Which was what he intended to do, before Lang got the chance to send the sisters into the Valley. He was agonizingly close to their shared room in the inn before he tripped and fell flat on the floor. It was night, it was dark in the hallway, so naturally, it was expected to trip on something.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Or someone.

Yu Wang stifled a curse. "Duo? What the hell, man?"

"Answer the damn question: where were you going?"

Yu Wang picked himself up and brushed off his tunic. "Going for a walk."

"A walk."

"Yes."

"A walk that just so happens to be in the direction of the Wu Sisters' room?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. _Gakk_!" Wang found himself slammed up against the wall, Duo's hand around his throat.

"I'm only saying this once," Duo gritted out, "You stay the hell away from them."

"Which...one?" Wang managed to gasp out.

"All three of them!"

"Why Lan Duo, you greedy bastard...don't feel like sharing?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Yu Wang pointed down the hall to the room in question. "Why didn't you tell me you were banging all three of them?"

This caught Duo off-guard, and he stammered, "I—it—_what_? What the—where did—"

"Oh c'mon, everyone's talking about it. You can tell me—is it good?"

Duo finally gave in and punched him. While Wang was recovering, the door to the Sisters' room opened and Zhu poked her head out. "Hey, can you guys keep it down? We're trying to sleep!"

"Sorry, Zhu," Duo said. "We won't be long. _Will we_, Wang?"

Zhu frowned and huffed. "Whatever. Either of you wake us up again, we're ripping out your spleens." Then she forced a sunny smile, "Night!" and slammed the door, throwing the deadbolt with a loud _thunk_.

"You hear that? Is losing your spleen really worth it?"

Yu Wang stood and glared at the other wolf in the darkness. He hissed, "One of them—just one of them..."

"And you think that if you just throw yourself at them, they're going to say 'take me I'm yours'? Please tell me you're not that delusional."

"Just tell me—are you sleeping with them?"

"_No_!"

"Okay...so which one _are_ you sleeping with?"

"Wha—"

"C'mon, man, don't hold out. I don't want sloppy seconds."

"You sick, son of a—"

"What's going on?"

Duo and Wang looked down the hallway at Lang, who held a single candle to combat the darkness. The young wolf looked between them, noticed Yu Wang's bloodied lip and Duo's murderous glances towards the light-gray pervert. "So...someone wanna tell me what's up?"

Duo looked at Wang, then back at Lang. "Nope, I'm not gonna bother explaining this, aside from Wang here can't keep _his_ in his pants."

"Ooh, _funny_, like no one's used that one before!"

"Dude," Lang said, shaking his head at the light-gray wolf. "Really?"

"Give me a break," the slender assassin said. "I haven't had _anything_ since we left White Wolf's compound."

"Oh, poor baby," Duo said scathingly.

"Shut up."

"You're gonna have to wait a little longer," Lang said seriously. "I'm sending the sisters into the Valley tomorrow morning."

Desperate, Wang said, "Send me with them."

"If you're sending him," Duo cut in, "Then you're sure as hell sending me."

"_No one_ but the Wu Sisters and Zi Hao are going in," Lang growled. "The sisters have been to the Valley before, they know the terrain, and they know how to blend in. I need you both here to plan the invasion. Wang, go back to bed."

"But—"

"And if it's that big a problem—"

"Or little," Duo snickered.

"-then take matters in hand, got it?" Lang thumbed over his shoulder. "Go on, get outta here."

Yu Wang may not have obeyed him before, but with Duo standing there, and the kid in Koshchei's good graces, he wasn't willing to take chances...no matter how much he felt he needed it.

After the light gray wolf slunk off, Lang turned to his teacher. "He was trying to sneak in?"

"Apparently."

"Is he aware they probably would have killed him?"

"I think he's too horny to worry about that."

"What about you?"

Duo stared at him strangely. "What _about_ me?"

"You know...are you..._with_ either of them?"

"Wai—aw hell, not you, too!"

Lang shrugged. "I only ask because Koshchei's curious."

"Why does everyone think—"

Lang ticked it off on his fingers. "Let's see...you spend all your free time with them, you're frequently alone with at least _one_ of them, and there's enough sexual tension between you and Jiang that everyone expects you two to start humping like rabbits any day now."

Duo now stood speechless, trying very hard to see how his pupil suddenly was accusing him of fraternization...within ranks. Granted, it would have been female ranks, but still... "There is nothing going on between Jiang and me."

"You're sure?"

Duo arched a brow. "Lang, I think I'd know if there was anything going on. Even the densest guy would know."

"I dunno," Lang teased, "you're a pretty heavy sleeper. You might not even know if..."

"As awesome at _that_ would be, I doubt Jiang even sees me that way."

Lang looked like he wanted to say something, but changed his mind, and the subject. He pointed at their door. "So are they still threatening kidneys?"

"Nah, they moved up to spleens."

"Damn, they must be really tired."

"Can it wait until morning?"

"No, I gotta give them something."

When Lang pulled out the bag of money—the big bag of money—Duo's eyes bulged. "Holy hell," Duo gasped. "Where'd you get the money?"

"Don't worry about it," Lang said shortly, opening the bag and handing Duo a smaller bag. "Just give an equal share to each of your people, and send them in small groups into the valley. Tell them to bide their time, spend some money, but not draw attention to themselves. With the Winter Solstice coming up, the Valley will be expecting an influx of visitors, so the inns will be prepared for large numbers of people."

"I'm...actually really impressed."

"Thank you," Lang said with a grin. "But I'm not done yet."

"So did you steal it?"

"Nope. And I told you not to worry about it. Just go get some sleep, I'll wake you in the morning so you can say goodbye if you want. Also, could you show me that one move with the spear I keep messing up?"

Duo nodded, pocketing the bag of coins. "Yeah, no problem. Have a good night, kid."

* * *

Lang returned to the room he shared with Koshchei about a half hour later. The leopard was, unsurprisingly, still awake late into the night, sitting in front of the fire and smoking his pipe as his blue-green eyes stared into the flames. Lang briefly wondered if he ever slept at all.

"Vhere did you get money?" Koshchei asked.

The sudden question surprised him, but he quickly answered, "I collected a bounty."

Koshchei paused, taking his eyes off the fire. "Who?"

Lang set the bag of money down by his sleeping pallet next to the fireplace, within reach of the leopard, and draped a blanket around his shoulders. "Who do you think? Bao Nu. He thought he had twenty thousand on his head...he was off by a couple hundred, but who am I to split hairs? He was a lot easier to take down than I thought..." Lang looked at Koshchei. "Now I know why you don't like it easy. It's very...disappointing. I expected more."

"I haff trained you vell," Koshchei said with admiration. "You are ready for invasion, yes?"

"Hardly an invasion, isn't it? Not going in en masse, a few at a time like this...more like an infiltration."

"Is not vhat I expect from volf."

"I thought you liked that, though?"

"I do! Am very impressed...but am vondering vhat next move vill be?"

Lang smirked at his teacher, "Uh-uh, you taught me better than that."

Koshchei returned the grin, patting the boy on the shoulder. "So did I. _Da_, _da_ I teach very vell."

He left Lang to plan his next move. He was very impressed with the wolf's progress...extremely impressed, actually. Lang had taken to the protege role much better than any of Koshchei's previous attempts. It was actually rather disturbing...and very little disturbed Koshchei anymore. But that's how he knew he'd succeeded.

His original plan was to kill Lang after he'd gotten what he wanted, but now the old leopard saw a chance that had never been offered to him. A chance for his name to live on in infamy, through Lang. Lang was his ticket to immortality. Most men who died notorious lost their notoriety to the sands of time, but those that were truly monsters – made, not born – they were the ones people remembered. Those monsters were the ones that became the boogeymen, the nightmares that haunted the heads of little children at night. The monsters that make people truly afraid of the darkness...because it is too easy for people to fall into that kind of darkness. It reminded them just how easy it was to get corrupted.

Lang was wondering the same things, more or less. He had learned a lot. He had trained, he had grown stronger, more agile, less naïve. It felt great, having this newfound power. Before long, word would spread that Bao Nu was missing, and no one would suspect little Lang of killing the huge wrathful wolf and dumping his headless body in the lake. But if killing Bao Nu was so easy...how easy would it be to kill Koshchei? Unlike others with a more personal stake, Lang didn't see Koshchei as a monster that needed to be destroyed...he saw him as a rival. Lang didn't want to share the glory of taking the Valley of Peace, but as long as Koshchei was around, that's exactly what would happen.

He couldn't outright kill him, though. A man his age, in the business as long as he had been...the old cat definitely suspected someone would try to kill him. Perhaps he expected Lang would kill him one day. So why bother? The old leopard was near eighty anyway, and would probably die of natural causes soon enough. And even then...old people didn't have the same reflexes that they used to...and if an old man were to take a fall, well, no one would suspect anything more than bad knees or a bad hip. Especially if that fall happened while said old man was crossing a dangerous rope bridge.

* * *

Chengdu was more than what the warriors expected. This was the first time Po had been to Sichuan, Tai Lung's second time, and Altai's...well, he had lost count. They came upon a bustling metropolis, alive and loud as most cities are. It was a crossroads for many trade routes, the Southern Silk and Tea Road, canals and rivers that crisscrossed the empire. Po could easily see how the Yu family could make a living here, with so many different peoples converging in one place...Yu Na had to have made a killing.

What concerned him was the sheer number of pandas here. Farmers, fishermen, woodsmen, even rich men and their wives. It went without saying...Po felt a little inadequate seeing all these rich, single men...and realizing either one of them could have been Su Lin's husband.

That was why he was here, after all. He wanted to do something for Su Lin. After having many days' travel, and relatively quiet nights to think about it...he realized he had not been the boyfriend he could have been. He hadn't been the man he should have been. He wanted to make things right.

"How long will we be here?" Tai Lung asked. "Not to rush you, I just want to be home as soon as possible..."

"No biggie," Po said. "I just came for one thing. No more than two days, I promise. Hopefully I can get it all done today."

"What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

"Something for Su Lin."

"Ah." The snow leopard left it at that. He wasn't entirely sure Po had forgiven him for how he felt about the female panda. Granted, bringing up "Su Lin" and "me shagging" within the same sentence probably hadn't helped. Still, Po's reaction made Tai Lung nervous. He still had one secret to tell him, and he was fearful how it would go. They still had not created their mental link as Sun Bear had told them to, and that bothered him. But if Po knew what had happened at Chorh-Gom, and completely rejected him for it...they were doomed.

It didn't help that Altai kept nudging him to tell the panda. "If you don't, I will."

"You wouldn't dare," the feline hissed at the rhino. Little Brother paid little attention to the adults—he was busy trying to work the chopsticks in his tiny hands so he could eat noodles without splashing them all over his front. Altai took a moment to show Little Brother the correct way to hold the chopsticks, and the red panda smiled up at him and started eating.

"Tai Lung, he _needs_ to know," he said, as if he knew Sun Bear's instructions. Neither Tai Lung nor Po had told him why they were in Tibet, and in the interim, the snow leopard wanted to keep it that way.

"I told you how he reacted when I told him about my crush..."

"Yes, but that was his girlfriend. There's a big difference between a crush that never went anywhere, and something this serious."

"There has to be another way," Tai Lung said, nursing a cup of tea. _There has to be a way to open up that link without him knowing..._ he thought to himself

"Why are you so concerned about this? I told you already that my opninion of you didn't change. Why should Po's?"

"You don't understand."

"What don't I understand?"

"He was the first person aside from you to treat me as a person. He treated me as a friend. He is the closest thing to a brother I will ever know."

At this, Altai had nothing further to say. Rhino and snow leopard sighed heavily and downed the rest of their tea. After people-watching for a while, Altai finally asked, "So you never did tell me why you went to Tibet?"

Tai Lung paused. "Pilgrimage."

The rhino gave him a look. "A pilgrimage."

"I'm not allowed to have a spiritual journey?"

"It's not that, it's just...so unlike you."

"Unlike me? Let's see, let's go down the list, shall we? My wife is heavily pregnant in a high-risk pregnancy that risks losing both her and the baby, there's somehow still people chasing me and wanting to kill me, and I have an invasion to stop, plus protecting the Valley and being a filial son and doting husband. _I think I could use a month meditating on top of a bleeding mountain, don't you_?"

Altai stared at him impassively before replying. "Feel better?"

"Mildly. Thanks for letting me vent."

"No problem." Altai drew his attention away from the snow leopard at the incessant tugging on his sleeve. He looked down and saw Little Brother giving him a strained, desperate look and immediately understood. "We'll be right back: I think we need to find the little monk's room. Right?"

Little Brother nodded vigorously.

Tai Lung sighed, muttering under his breath, "I _told_ him not to drink so much juice..."

"Lighten up, he's just a kid."

After Altai and Little Brother left, Tai Lung thought about it. Had he been too rough on Little Brother? He wasn't used to being a guardian to a young child, though he supposed he'd have to get used to it. He was falling into the same trap that Shifu had fallen into...and that was exactly what he did not want to have happen. He wasn't going to make the same mistakes with his children that Shifu made with him. He wasn't going to be too strict, he was going to hug and kiss his children, let them play as long as possible, make sure they went through school, maybe send them to university so they could be doctors (or fine, maybe lawyers). He would let them have all the opportunities that he never did. That included kung fu.

He sighed and held his head in his hands. How was he going to work around that? As the Phoenix Warrior – was it even official? - kung fu would be a part of his life now whether he liked it or not. It made sense to teach his children kung fu so that they could protect themselves should any of his enemies rise up to hurt him and his family (it was also part of the reason he stepped up Mei Xing's training before their marriage; he wanted her to be prepared for the worst-case scenario). But the fact remained that he did not want to teach his children kung fu. He did not want to put them through what he had gone through. He didn't want them getting hurt; case in point, two days ago when Little Brother stumbled and skinned his knee, seeing those big fat tears rolling down those chubby red cheeks broke his heart. Altai had been a true saint and been right there by the cub's side, cleaning away the dirt, patching him up, and offering him a hug to make him feel better. But Tai Lung had frozen. He knew in his heart what he had to do, but when presented with a chance to practice how to be a father...he froze at the mere sound of a child's painful crying.

Oh gods. Oh gods, what was he _thinking_? How could he be a father? Who the hell was he kidding? He would be an awful father, he would screw those kids up so bad there would be no hope for future generations. The entire family line was screwed...

The wind blew hard enough to nearly bend some nearby bamboo in half – thus slamming one bamboo shoot right down onto Tai Lung's head. Biting back a curse and rubbing his cranium, he decided it was a very coincidental moment to be hit on the head by bamboo, though that didn't mean he truly forgot...

_Thanks_, he thought, hoping _he_ was listening. _I really needed that...but I also really need your help._

* * *

Po was having his own troubles. There were dozens of temples in Chengdu, and for a huge city with many winding roads and alleys, it was hard to find the one he was looking for. He was working blindly, of course, having no clue where Su Lin's family may have worshipped, but he could scratch off the first eleven. Number twelve was coming up. _Twelve like the animals in the zodiac_, he told himself, _so that means this has to be lucky, right?_

At the entrance to the shrine, Po deposited an offering of a few coins and lit some incense for the ancestors...whoever they were. He didn't know these people, but hey, even strangers in the afterlife needed offerings. He knew he would appreciate it if someone did it for him after he had joined his ancestors.

He came upon a long-tailed monkey sweeping the steps of the sanctuary, one that was old and gray. Still, he looked friendly, so Po decided to try his luck.

"Excuse me, sir?"

The monkey paused his sweeping and smiled at the newcomer. "Yes, young panda, how may I help you?"

"I was wondering if you could tell me about a family that used to live around here, a long time ago," Po said hopefully, imploringly. "The Yu family, the mom was named Yu Na...she was a healer, had three kids..." This was the same introduction he had given at the other shrines and temples, always without luck.

The elderly monkey blinked in surprise, and Po finally realized his luck. "Goodness, that _was_ a long time ago. Nearly fifteen years since..." he cut himself off and shook his head. "Those poor souls. The whole family, gone, just like that. I know it is wrong to speak ill of the dead, but good riddance to the Jiao! But why are you asking about them? Surely you were very young when that happened...are they relatives of yours?"

"No," Po said. "But I know their daughter, Su Lin."

The monkey stared at him. "That is impossible. The whole family died in that fire."

"No they didn't. Su Lin is alive. She's living in the Valley of Peace, carrying on her mother's legacy as a healer." Po swallowed hard. "I know her personally. She doesn't know I'm here. I have two big favors to ask of you, then you can ask anything of me and I'll do it to the best of my ability."

Guardedly, the monkey said, "All right...name them."

Po took a deep breath, then said, "Okay, first, I know this will be hard, because you must've known the family personally..."

"We all did," he corrected him. "Yu Na was a saint in this city, and everyone knew or knew of her. She never turned a client away if they needed her."

"Okay, well...I want to pay my respects."

The monkey seemed to know what he meant. "Most people don't go around there anymore. They claim it's haunted."

"I don't care," the panda said. "Where is it?"

An hour later, Po made his way through an overgrown path that had long ago been reclaimed by the forest surrounding it. Young bamboo had shot up along the path to the old place around the bend, and yellowed grass and dead leaves coated the muddy pathway towards his final destination. When Po finally emerged from the undergrowth, he stopped short to look out at the clearing. What he saw made his heart sink and his stomach turn.

All that remained were the charred remnants of what must have been a cozy house. Built in the traditional way, with a high wall, courtyard, and three main buildings, the Yu family home must have been a warm and welcoming place over ten years ago. Now the wall had crumbled to dusty red bricks and smashed white plaster, terracotta roof tiles littering the grasses around it. The main houses had been completely destroyed, with only rotting charred wood beams and fire-glazed roof tiles to bear testiment that this was once a home. The gate through the walls into the courtyard still stood, shaky though it was. The Yu family name was inscribed in decorative calligraphy on a plaque by the door on what little remained of the doorway. Po stepped through the doorway.

Now standing in Su Lin's childhood home, he looked around and tried to picture how it must have looked. To the center lay the family's main rooms, the eating area, reception rooms, and the place where Su Lin's parents slept. To his left, where Su Lin and her brother and sister likely slept. To his right, unmistakably, was the wing where Yu Na had set up shop. He guessed this because of how thoroughly destroyed it was. His guess was that this building was where the family had been trapped...and the fire had quickly spread to the rest of the house.

There was an air of sadness about this place, a profound sense of loss, and it brought tears to his eyes. He felt their pain here, he felt their fear. Even if they were in Heaven, it did little to lessen their suffering. So Po knelt, in the middle of the courtyard, and bowed deeply to where the family altar must have once been.

When he sat up, he felt as if something or someone was there. He didn't bother looking. "Hiya," he said.

Wind whistled through the trees above him, casting yellow and orange leaves around him. "So...hi. My name's Po. Po Ping, son of Mr. Ping, from the Valley of Peace. Um...I'm a noodle chef, but uh, also the Dragon Warrior...I dunno if you know what the Dragon Warrior is, but it's kinda a big deal...wow, sorry if that sounded conceited or anything. I'm new to the whole kung fu hero stuff."

There was a pause in the air, a tense hesitation. He continued, "Listen, I'm really sorry about what happened here. I know it's not my fault, but I still feel bad. I want you all to know, if you're listening, that...Su Lin's okay. I mean, she's really okay. Oh, uh, I guess I should explain...she lives in the Valley of Peace now, that's how I met her, and she's such a sweetheart, and wicked smart, right? Like, she can heal anybody and anything, and it's really cool how she does it. Oh, and she's this _awesome_ cook, and makes noodles that sometimes puts my dad's to shame, but, um, don't tell him I said that."

He felt a tender breeze ruffle the fur on his face, and he smiled a little. "You'd be proud of her. Not only is she smart and sweet, like I bet she was when you knew her, but she's grown into a really beautiful woman. And I mean that, um, I'm sure she was a pretty girl when she was littler, but she's beautiful now, I mean really! She's got these big brown eyes that just draw a guy in, and her smile lights up the whole room, and when she laughs, I could be having the worst day in the world, right? And when she laughs, she makes it all better.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that..." he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Wow, I'm screwing this up. Sorry, I won't take up much more of your time from doing...spirit stuff. Anyway...Miss Yu Na, ma'am, if you're listening...I love your daughter Su Lin. I love her, like, a lot. I'm not real good with words, so I don't know how else to say it. I know you all are traditional and everything and want to arrange her marriage and everything...but, if it's okay with you guys...I want to marry her. I can't imagine my life without her, and I know I'm supposed to wait for the whole love thing...but I really do. And I know this is the worst possible way to go about this, and the worst possible place, and not the best time either because of this big battle that's coming up – long story, I'll tell you later – but, if it's okay..." He bowed low again, "...I humbly ask your permission to marry your daughter, Miss Yu Su Lin."

The air was still again. It made him nervous, but not for the reasons he suspected. "So, uh...you need some time to think about it, that's cool, I understand. I know this is completely from out of nowhere, and you don't really know me, and you need some time...but, just think about it. Please?"

"What's there to think about?"

Po jumped up with a startled yelp, whirling around to find Tai Lung standing at the edge of the clearing. "Dude! Not cool!"

The snow leopard winced. "Sorry."

"How long were you standing there?"

"Long enough." Tai Lung's eyes scanned the remains of the house. "So this is it, is it?"

"Yeah. What're you doing here?"

"I saw you going off alone, and I got worried. You took too long in the temple..." he said, carefully stepping over debris, as if disturbing it would commit a grave sacrilige...which in a way, it would.

Po rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the hairs stand on end...and sensing that someone was right behind him, even though they were alone. "Yeah, it took that priest guy a little time to take care of my second favor..."

"Which was?"

"I can't tell you yet. It's a secret...and a surprise."

"The good kind of surprise, I hope?"

"It's for Su Lin."

"Ah." He left it at that. Then he looked around the clearing, cleared his throat, and said, "For what it's worth...you won't find a better match here. I can tell you all, right now, that this panda standing before me will treat your daughter like an empress. He worships the ground she walks on, but more than that, it's pretty clear she's fond of him, too. I may not know Su Lin as well as you all do, but I trust her judgment. Po's a good bloke; I trust him with my life. He's the mightiest warrior I've ever met, the kindest soul, and the best darn chef to boot, so she wouldn't have to cook every night. What his family lacks in wealth they make up for in virtue. When I was still society's outcast, both Po and his father welcomed me as family, treated me as blood. There's always room for one more at Mr. Ping's," he said with a warm smile towards Po. Po grinned back, knowing exactly what his feline friend was doing.

"In my oh-so humble opinion, Mr. and Mrs. Yu, this really is a no-brainer," Tai Lung continued, "But if you're not convinced, feel free to follow us, if you can. Though, erm, if on your side of the universe, you happen to run into a cranky old ursine kung fu master or a largely senile old tortoise with good taste in tea, they can vouch for us, too."

"Thanks, buddy."

"Anytime, Po, anytime. Do you think they heard us?"

Po looked around the courtyard again, listening to the wind rustling through the trees and undergrowth. Then he felt a tender breeze against his face again, and a sensation almost like someone laying a palm against his cheek in a warm and maternal way...similar to the way Su Lin laid her hand against his cheek. He smiled, "I got a pretty good feeling."

* * *

"Dalang..."

"Godsdammit, five more minutes..."

"Come on, Bug, get up."

Dalang's eyes flashed open. Bug. Only one person had ever called him that. He sat up and gasped when he saw the specter sitting at the foot of his bed. "Holy..._Xiang_?"

Jiao Xiang looked nothing like the man who had died on the roof of Aunt Wu's Dim Sum restaurant. The wild look of insanity was gone from his dark eyes, the dark circles under his eyes were also gone, and for the first time since before his addiction, he looked well-kept, fur glossy and smooth, unlike the bedraggled, haggard appearance that had aged him far past his years. Now, he looked no older than Shang had looked before his death. But probably the biggest difference between the addict and the spirit that sat before him...was the smile on his face.

"Hey Bug," he warmly said.

"Holy shit..." Dalang rubbed his eyes. "Is that...that can't be you."

"There's no opium in the afterlife. And I've found people who take decent care of me. They left very generous offerings at Ghost Festival. Why do you think I look so well fed?"

Dalang, still speechless, hazarded a guess: "You're haunting their house."

Xiang shrugged, and attempted a joke, something he was never really good at. "Shake a few chains here, creaky floor boards there, throw in a little mournful wailing...oh don't give me that look. Where else can I go? I never got much further than that restaurant you used to have over there. The landlord rented the apartments out before I could follow you to your new home." The elder tiger looked at the surroundings. "It's very nice here. They are beautiful, your wife and son. You deserve all of this."

"And you don't?"

"You know what I became, Dalang. I'm lucky I'm stuck here, and not where our father is."

"But you weren't always..." Dalang sighed. "What did Koshchei do to you?"

Xiang paused, but answered, though it was clear he was not comfortable doing so. "If you have to ask, you don't want to know."

"Why did he do it? Shang said you'd insulted him..."

"I told him to leave you the fuck alone," Xiang growled. "He doesn't like people telling him what to do, so he made sure I learned my lesson."

Dalang fell silent, allowing Xiang to continue. "I'm only able to talk to you because you're dreaming. You'll need to get up soon, so I'll be brief. As much as it will sicken you, please, _please _honor us as you honor Mother and Shang. I have it better off than the others, but I can't keep haunting those families to keep from starving."

"Why should I, after everything this family did to me?"

"Think about it, Bug: are all your troubles because of us...or because of _him_?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Dad tried to kill me!"

Xiang frowned. "Can't you understand why? He had to!"

"Why? Did he think I was that dang-" Dalang froze when he saw the pained look on his brother's face. "...Oh my gods...he thought I would kill him."

Dalang yelped as he hit the floor, sunlight ruthlessly invading his eyes as Sonam tore the curtains away. "Up and at 'em, lad, we're wasting daylight!"

Dalang groaned, re-registering the pulled muscles and aching joints from the day before. The tiger glared up at the snow leopard, who only glared right back. "I sure hope you can kill with a stare, boy, otherwise you're buggered, now let's go!"

Dalang groaned again and picked himself up. He popped his back, and spotted Shifu in the doorway of his room. The tiger got an idea. "Master Shifu? You think you could help me work on my meditation breath? I'm not sure I got it..."

* * *

Back at the Jade Palace, Dalang had chosen a place surrounded by bamboo to sit and meditate. His legs crossed, hands resting on his knees, he straightened his back, breathed deeply, just as Shifu instructed. The red panda watched him closely. He knew there was more to Dalang's question than the tiger let on; he had another reason for wanting to perfect his meditation. Most people wouldn't focus so hard unless they were trying to achieve something. The red panda said nothing, allowing the tiger's thoughts to travel...

Dalang became acutely aware that he was in a place much like where he was sitting and meditating. He was in a clearing, though, surrounded by bamboo so thick it was impossible to see through to the outside of the forest. And sure enough, as he had hoped, Shen was waiting.

"Is it true?" Dalang immediately demanded. He left no room for greetings. As soon as he was aware of his dead father's presence, he asked the pivotal question.

Shen's tone was as frigid as ever. "Is what true?"

"The reason you wanted me dead: You thought I would assassinate you. Is that true?"

Shen didn't say anything.

Dalang suddenly roared, "ANSWER ME!"

Shen's shoulders heaved with what would have been a heavy sigh if he were alive. "It is not true."

Dalang stared at him. "Then why?"

"I did it to protect my family."

Dalang narrowed his eyes at him.

Shen turned to him and scowled, "Don't act so clueless."

"Gods-dammit Shen, for once in your miserable...afterlife!...give me a damned straight answer!"

Shen finally rounded on him with the fury of hell in his dark eyes, and he roared, "I did it to _save you from yourself_! If I hadn't stopped you, you would have turned out just like _him_! I'd lost one son to that son of a bitch, I wasn't going to lose another!"

Dalang was stunned. When he finally trusted himself to speak, he asked quietly, like a breeze through the bamboo forest behind him, "How bad was I?"

"You don't remember?"

Dalang shook his head. He heard Shen make a frustrated sound. "How could you forget?"

"Maybe I wanted to forget."

"If that is the case, I can hardly blame you."

Dalang stared at the ground, unable to look the ghoul in the eye. "I really was a monster...or I was going to be."

"I thought you _were_," Shen said, somewhat mournfully. "I got my hopes up when you were shaken by Asmodei burying that man alive...but you went right back to him the next day."

"What choice did I have?" Dalang angrily asked. "You were scared of him too, we all were, especially Xiang." He paused. "Did you ever find out what he did to him?"

"No. Xiang never told me, and Asmodei never mentioned it. Whatever it was, I was happy that Xiang was finding his own ways to deal with it. He could have been completely broken down..."

Dalang snorted derisively. "I think you should've gotten your eyes checked: he _was _broken. By the end of his life, there was nothing left of him. The Xiang that lightning struck was not my brother, and he wasn't your son, either. I think we both know that. His death was a mercy, and I think Shang knew that, otherwise he wouldn't've helped." The younger tiger fell silent, knowing Shen's silence meant the departed patriarch at least in some way agreed with him. "How is he?"

"Xiang?" Shen asked. "He...well, his spirit is nothing like the animal that died. It seems in death he is himself again. Yes, death was a mercy to him."

"He came to me in a dream last night."

"So I heard."

"Is it true he's haunting what used to be Aunt Wu's Dim Sum?"

"Yes. He got a better deal, as it were, because many of his atrocities were committed long after his addictions began, long after he was no longer himself."

"And he can't move on to the next life? I mean, yeah, he did some really fucked-up things..."

"But only when he was as high as a Manchurian pine," Shen agreed. "No amount of remorse can change what happened, at least in the gods' eyes. And who among the council of the gods would listen to the likes of me? Had Asmodei never tortured him, I feel Xiang would have turned out more like you did...normal." Shen actually smiled this time, ironic and mirthless. "To think, I wanted each of you to be extraordinary, but you all would have been happier if I'd just let you do what you wanted. Shang could have been a decorated general, Xiang a gifted statesman, the twins could have opened up that shop they talked about, Feng could have married that girl he talked about, and Huang could have been an apothecary. It is all my fault...its no wonder none of us can move on."

"Too much unfinished business," Dalang echoed. He stared into space, listening to his own breathing and the wind in the trees...and made a decision that seemed both blasphemous...and yet _right_. "I gotta go. I'll let you know how my training goes."

"Where are you going?" Shen asked before Dalang started pulling away.

"I'm going to do something I should've done a long time ago..." and when he came out of his meditation, he couldn't wait to get through this day of training to carry out his filial duties.

* * *

In all the rush to plan for the invasion, Tigress had neglected one important duty: praying and giving offerings to her parents and her in-laws. She found some of the best fruits still available, plus some rice she set into bowls for each ancestor. She placed them all on a tray and took them from the kitchen into the main room of the house.

Tigress turned the corner and stopped short. Someone had changed the altar. There were more ancestor tablets there, six of them, brand new, each with three sticks of incense burning in front of them. The air was thick with the smoke, and she almost choked on it, feeling unable to breathe. So it surprised her to see her husband on his knees at the altar, holding his hands together in prayer, and showing no outward signs of reaction to the incense.

She crept a little closer, curiosity overwhelming her, stopped dead and almost dropped her offering in shock.

She read the tablets: Jiao Ang, Jiao Chang, Jiao Feng, Jiao Huang, Jiao Xiang, and Jiao Shen. Her husband was praying to-or for?-his dead family. The tablets were situated right under the portraits of his mother and favorite brother, a heartbreakingly symbolic gesture...for the first time in years, the family was all together again. And instead of cursing them, Dalang was praying, chanting the same sutra over and over again to whatever god would listen.

Tigress was confused. His family hated him, and the feeling was mutual, wasn't it? Why was he honoring them after all the hell they put him through? Especially Shen and Huang-those two, of any of them, were beyond saving.

"I'm almost done," Dalang said suddenly, startling her. Tigress grasped her offering closer, then sighed,

"No, take your time...I'll just..."

He sat back on his knees and looked back at her. "I've been having dreams about them. Shang, my brother, is not with them. Neither is Mom. I take that to mean they're in heaven. Everyone else...they're suffering."

"For good reason."

"No, that's not true."

She set the tray of offerings on the altar. "Are you defending the horrible things they did?"

"No way, not ever." He looked back at the ancestor tablets, inhaling deeply and exhaling heavily. "Shen has been coming to me in my dreams. Xiang haunted my dreams last night. All I know is that they're suffering, but they've been telling me some...pretty surprising things."

"Like what?"

"Like the real reason Dad wanted to kill me was because he wanted to save me from becoming a monster like Koshchei. Koshchei had already turned Xiang into a monster, and... 'I'd already lost one son to him, I wasn't about to lose another'...that's what he said. Thing is, if that's true, I don't know that I can blame him."

He paused, and continued, "The twins didn't do anything that any other soldier wouldn't do...they did things they weren't proud of, but like good soldiers, they followed orders. They didn't know any other way. They need these prayers. Xiang needs prayers because, well, he needs them if he can ever attain peace. And Huang...he's going to need all the prayers he can get."

"And Feng?"

Dalang sighed and looked at Feng's tablet. "I don't know. He and I weren't really close. But if Xiang and Shen have appeared in my dreams already, for some reason I get the feeling the whole damn family's gonna come around...and I'd like 'em to be happy to see me, for once."

"You don't think any of them would try to harm you in your sleep, do you?" Tigress was not by nature a superstitious person, and didn't profess a strong belief in ghosts. But if the danger was truly there...

Dalang shook his head. "I think there's an agreement that I'm the only one who can secure their release from the Pit. I don't know if they'll all be reincarnated, or if a couple will slip through the cracks..."

"You actually think some of your family members have a chance at reincarnation?" she dubiously asked. She smiled when he smirked:

"Don't tell Shen, but I'm also praying to Yanluo Wang to reincarnate him as a little bunny rabbit, just to piss him off."

Tigress grinned. "Sounds like a fair trade. What do you want Huang to come back as?"

"Dunno, come kinda bug, I guess." The chef glanced at Xiang's tablet and smiled fondly. He picked it up and showed it to her, "Shang was like a father to me, but Xiang was definitely the 'big brother'. When I was really little, he had to babysit me, and I guess I really liked to hug people when I was a cub, before I knew better. He started calling me 'Bug' because I was a 'little cuddle bug'."

She smiled. "Aww..."

"Yeah, that's what Mom said. Shen hated it. Shang laughed at it, later said it fit because I scurried around everywhere and bugged the hell outta people. But Xiang was the only one who ever called me 'Bug'." He set the tablet back down and tapped on Huang's tablet. "Huang, I remember, was always a jerk. I don't know why. I don't think he liked any one of us. He tolerated Feng, I think, and I think Feng actually liked us, hell, maybe he loved us, but didn't know how to show it, or even if he should. You remember, he was a hell of an archer, and though I never told him, I was always kinda jealous of that. I mean, you should've seen the things he could do with a bow and arrow, he was a prodigy! And me...I threw knives. Not really impressive."

"It _is _impressive," she told him. "Sonam wouldn't rave about you if he didn't think you were good at what you do. Even Shifu told me how impressed he was."

"_Shifu_ said that, really?"

"Really," she nodded. She came and knelt by his side and looked up at the altar. After a long pause, he spoke up. "I want to tell you about them, all of them, the good things I remember. I didn't want to say anything before because, yeah, I wanted to forget it, mostly because recalling the good times hurt more because it made me realize how much I lost. And talking about the good times would've made me look like I excused the things they did." He took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. "If you're willing to listen, I'm willing to talk."

"Of course," she said, standing up. She nodded at the new ancestor tablets. "But first...I think I need to cook more rice."

Dalang just smiled.

* * *

On the far wall of the village's perimeter that same night, the Wu Sisters carefully scanned the walls. They had hurried into the Valley as soon as they could; they left too early for Lan Duo to say goodbye. Zi Hao stayed behind at their base camp with a couple others, waiting for the sisters to return.

The females noted the guards: when they switched shifts, when they were most alert. They noted who came through the gates, and how often. They noted the strengths and weaknesses of the walls themselves. That was how they discovered the eastern gate.

The East Gate was the least defended of the three main gates. The village had no North Gate—the Jade Palace served this purpose, and no opposing force was stupid enough to enter the valley that way. The East Gate was a simple wooden door set into a moon gate. The hinges were old and rusted; it clearly had not been used in ages, and if they attempted to open it, it would have made too much noise and blown their cover. The snow leopardesses improvised.

They waited until they were sure it was late enough for them to not be detected. Once the windows had gone dark, they made their move. Zhu threw the first grapling hook and got a good hold on the first try. She threw the two others for her sisters, and together they scaled the wall. At the top, they slid down the steps and slid away into the alleys. They hugged the shadows, moving like clouds in a storm. Their cloaks and straw hats hid their identities, but anyone paying too close attention could easily discern they were up to no good.

They were following on previous intelligence, a source on the inside. That was their first stop.

At the appointed hour, in the appointed place, they jumped into a cellar and closed the door behind them.

Tian was the first to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Opium. The air was rank and with decay, foul with the stench of nightsoil and other filth. Four males laid about on makeshift beds, smoking away at the pipes. In the corner, seated in the only real chair in the room, was their boss.

Still cloaked, their boss beckoned them forward. They did so, covering their mouths and noses with their cloaks in a desperate attempt to keep the stench out.

"We have a problem," Tian said before their employer could speak.

"What problem?"

"This kid, Lang, is Asmodei Koshchei's protege—"

The cloaked figure bristled under the disguise. "I _told_ you to stay away from him!"

"He didn't give us a choice. _You_ know, you've followed him for years!"

"Totally missing the point, boss!" Zhu spoke up. "This kid is trouble with one hell of a capital T! We've seen him kill innocent people."

"Tan Lan counts as innocent?" Jiang asked.

The employer sucked in a breath. "Tan Lan is dead?"

"You knew him?"

"Knew _of_ him—we've been on his tail for years. Who else?"

Zhu listed: "Yu Wang, Bao Nu, Xu Jiu, Zi Hao, and Lan Duo."

Tian noticed her sister Jiang stiffening when the last name was uttered; the eldest female narrowed her eyes at her sister.

"I know them," the employer said. "The last one, not so much, but the others are trouble. It's good Tan Lan's dead though, one last outlaw to worry about. And this Lang kid, who is he?"

"A nobody," Tian said. "He came out of nowhere, but Koshchei likes him. To be honest...the kid scares me more than Koshchei does."

Their boss stiffened. "That bad?"

"I suspect he's also killed Bao Nu."

Zhu and Jiang stared at their sister. Tian continued, "Bao Nu suddenly went missing, and _also_ suddenly, my sisters and I have spending money, given to us by Lang himself. He won't say where he got it."

"How?" Zhu asked. "Lang's shorter than I am! How could he take down Bao Nu?"

"Let's not worry about it," the employer said. "Let Koshchei be my worry. You have a mission to complete."

"Yeah, and that's the problem I was telling you about," Tian glared. "_Before_ I was interrupted."

"My apologies. Please proceed."

"We'll follow your orders, but Lang's also given us orders, straight from Koshchei."

"Which are?"

"Kidnap or kill the son of Master Tigress."

The cloaked figure sucked in a sharp breath. After a long, tense moment of silence, their employer spoke up, rubbing the hidden eyes beneath the cloak's hood. "Going after Zang is one thing; Koshchei's going to know you defied orders. He's uncanny about that."

"Exactly our fear. What do you propose we do?" Tian asked.

Zhu and Jiang were frozen in their apprehension. None of them wanted to give up their principles in an effort to preserve their lives. This was their biggest rule: no children. But that was Lang's idea. Killing Master Tigress's son would make her slip, make her useless in battle...making total takeover that much easier, and easier for them to take down the Iron Lady, as most of the outlaws had come to know her.

"Aside from being killed for disobeying him," their boss said, "what else will Koshchei and this Lang character do?"

"Probably kill the kid anyway," Jiang snorted...mostly to get the stench of mortal filth out of her nostrils.

"Alright, change of plans," the figure sat forward and whispered to the sisters. "Get in there, remove the child, bring him here. My agents can whisk him to safety..."

"I think you have a problem with your brain being missing," Jiang snapped. "Tigress will _kill_ us if we go anywhere near the kid."

"Which would you rather have: Koshchei kill an innocent child, or Tigress kill you?"

"Neither, if we can avoid it," Zhu said.

"I'm trusting you to do your jobs. Get the child out of the line of fire, then get Zang. He's holed up in the Jade Palace."

"Wow. Couldn't have made that any easier for us, could you?" Zhu said with a raised brow.

"I can get you into the Jade Palace. But let's worry about Tigress's child first."

"Why are we caring? Can't she take care of her own family?" Zhu asked.

"You're just going to have to trust me on this. That's an order. Kid first, Zang next."

Tian sighed through her nose. "Dead or alive?"

"I'd like him alive, but he won't go without a fight."

"Understood. One more question."

"Yes?" the employer said with strained tone.

Tian wrinkled her nose beneath the cloak. "Did you _have_ to choose an opium den?"

"Yes. Who would follow you down here?"

Jiang nodded. "Good point. Meet up in an hour?"

"One hour. Get it done. If you're not back here in an hour, I'm sending other agents after Zang. Are we understood?"

"Yes," they all agreed.

"Good, dismissed."

* * *

Later, unaware of the plots unfolding under her own nose, Tigress was preparing for bed. She called to her husband not to stay up too late; he was preparing dough for the next morning's dumplings and needed to get it _just right_ before he got to sleep. She stopped by the altar one more time before retiring for the night. This time she lay down some apples, one for each tablet, then lit a stick of incense for each. Bowing in respect, she looked up at the two portraits and sighed. "I know I've been coming to you for a lot lately, Shang, and I'm sorry if I've been a little needy. I just don't know if this will work."

She turned to Ming Hua's portrait. "All I can ask from you, Mother-in-law, is that you grant me strength and patience—being married to Shen for so long, I can only assume you have patience in spades."

She sighed again and held her arms, fighting back the sudden chill in the room. Tigress turned her attention to the other ancestor tablets, her brothers-in-law and father-in-law. "I can't believe I'm asking for this...but I could use your help, too. There's a reason you were all so successful for so long...and Shen, I could definitely use some pointers. Studying your seige tactics and battle strategies is one thing; but I know as well as you surely do that every battle is different. So...I'm not asking too much, I hope, but if you can spare even a tiny little tip, I'd really appreciate it. Why should you care, you're probably asking? Well, if you don't, you run a real risk of your entire family line dying out, so...food for thought."

She pressed her fist into her palm again and bowed. "Have a good night." The room had gotten steadily colder as she prayed, and now as soon as she left, she felt much warmer. She could never understand why that one room, even in the summer, was always so frigid.

* * *

She dreamed that night. Or, more accurately, relived a memory. She was back on the battlefield of the Jiao War, toe-to-toe with Jiao Feng again. He was just as savage as she remembered, just as dangerous. She hadn't liked how he looked at her before, but she liked this look even less now. This dream seemed...different, and he looked...different. Scrawnier, more ragged, even his clothes were suddenly in tatters. He dropped his weapon and yelled at her, "Wake up!"

But she was awake, wasn't she? She was here, she was fighting...

Feng suddenly leapt forward, grabbed her shoulders and started shaking her. "Tigress, WAKE UP!"

Her eyes flashed open, and as soon as she aware she was in bed...she saw the dark form in the room reaching into her baby's crib.

In a flash, the tiger was up and fighting. She grabbed the interloper and slammed them into the wall with a snarl. Then she felt two more at her back, pulling her away, one tightening a rope around her neck. She elbowed one hard in the gut, turned around and kicked them clear across the room, and the one with the rope around the tiger's neck received a powerful punch that slammed them into the trunk at the foot of the bed.

Turning back to the first assailant, she only barely dodged a knife aimed right at her throat. Tigress struck up with her arm, deflected the assailant's arm away then grabbed it, twisting hard and turning the enemy around to slam them face-first into the wall.

The commotion alerted the rest of the house. Tigress heard footsteps thundering up the stairs. She had to take these enemies down, and make sure they stayed down.

One was moving towards the crib. Tigress let go of the one in her claws and attacked the other. The third drew a blade and rushed over to the tiger. Tigress swung her leg in a wide kick, knocking the weapon out of the enemy's hand, then swung the other leg, nailing them in the chin. The third enemy went down. The second one had a hand on Shang, who wailed loudly with shrieks of terror. Tigress grabbed the second by the throat and squeezed, quickly turned around and grabbed the first by the throat as well, squeezing even harder.

Then light flooded the room, and Tigress got her first look at the trespassers. In the doorway, Dalang, Shifu and Wu Lien gasped in horror. So did Tigress. She had the Wu Sisters in her hands. Wu Jiang appeared to be unconscious on the floor—the one she had elbowed in the gut and kicked in the chin. Wu Zhu was in her right hand, clawing at the tiger's arm as her grip tightened around the snow leopardess's throat. Wu Tian was in her left hand, glaring at her with hellish rage. She had no right to. Tigress saw nothing but red. Being an assassin was bad enough, but this _bitch_ had the gall to threaten her baby...Tigress didn't care if Shang the whole world was watching. She was going to kill them, all three of them. But one thing stopped her: Wu Lien's voice.

"Girls?"

Tian and Zhu turned their eyes to the small red panda woman in the doorway. There was a look of utter shock on Auntie Wu's face, but nothing could match the looks on the snow leopardess's faces. It was Tian who gasped out the one thing that saved her from Tigress's rage...though it wasn't her rage that worried the assassin:

"Mother!"

In the ensuing silence, the only person to say anything was Shifu. He stared at his wife and repeated, "_Mother_?"

* * *

Maybe it's me, but I always thought making Auntie Wu the trainer of the Wu Sisters was...well, more obvious than I should have made it. I still hope it was a surprise.

A couple notes: "He'd make a nice throw rug" is, yes, a reference to the Lion King, when Zazu makes a suggestion for what to do about Scar. Lang's comment how "I can use that joke!" is my own (lovable) jab at Disney, which, as a company, is well known for holding onto those copyrights... (so please don't sue; parody is perfectly legal!)

The various phrases that Koshchei curses are actual Russian Curses, which I will not translate for impressionable persons (also because I lost the paper I'd written the words and their meanings on). Just assume they're not very nice things. I do remember that "_Ya te-bye primu kalgan, yesli nye slye-Dishza myet loi"_ means something akin to "I'll knock out your teeth if you don't watch your mouth" (or something like that; I lost the sheet I had these notes written down on, so I can't recall for sure.

Yes, I understand Lang may be learning Russian a hell of a lot quicker than I learned Spanish, but methinks I may yet be fluent if all my teachers had been psychotic mass murderers. It might've given me more incentive to master the different verb conjugations for _ver y hacer_...

Dalang being called "Bug" is another little detail drawn from real life, where certain family members received nicknames in infancy that's stuck with them to adulthood (those poor souls...).

I try to be as respectful to Chinese beliefs in the afterlife, but as it is a subject I am not incredibly knowledgable of, if I make any mistakes or write something even mildly offensive, please inform me and I will fix it; I don't want to offend anyone with my ignorance.

As always, please read and review!


	18. Chapter 18: Calm Before the Storm

Blah...I know, I know, it's been ages, and I'm sorry. But here's what's happened since the last update: I got engaged, started planning a wedding, adopted a kitten, had work, more work, even more work, a minor illness, ragweed allergies, a 5.9 magnitude earthquake on 8/23, a hurricane 3 days later that knocked out our power, then the remnants of a tropical storm this week, and...Christmas knitting. Why, God, Why did I plan to do this to myself again?

Anyway, I'm not happy with this chapter, but I really need to get the ball rolling again. I've been away from writing for too long and as I hate to leave anything unfinished, I need to finish this fic before I lose inspiration. I know it's crap. Please bear with me. And enjoy (if you can).

Disclaimer: obviously I don't own Kung Fu Panda or any of Dreamworks' characters. However, any Original Characters are mine, so please don't use them without my permission. Thanks.

Also, this chapter contains some spoilers from the second movie, just FYI in case you haven't seen it yet. You've been warned.

* * *

Chapter 18: Calm Before the Storm

* * *

"Star anise in cough suppressant? Really? I would've never thought of that."

"Well, the licorice is there for, of course, suppressing the cough, but I find my patients took it much better if it tasted sweeter," Wu Jiang stated.

Su Lin shrugged, "Makes sense. I just use honey, flavored with a little bit of orange or lemon rind."

"Ooh, that's a good one too..."

Shifu and Dalang sat in the corner watching the scene before them in the Long and Feng's private common room. Su Lin and Wu Jiang were animatedly talking about their separate experiences as healers. And Mantis and Wu Zhu were talking about their acupuncture techniques.

"Really? Whenever I tried that, I just made the headaches worse."

Zhu pressed her fingers against her temples and showed him, "Are you hitting right here, or further back?"

Mantis hopped up onto her shoulder to get a closer look. "Ew, further back, yeah. See, I made the mistake once of pressing too close to the forehead and, uh..."

She winced and made a face. "Oh, yeah, that can be a huge mess..."

"So right on the temples huh?"

"No, a little bit behind them, right here. I always applied a steady yet firm pressure. It shouldn't hurt them so if they wince, ease off and start massaging the area in small circles."

"Ohh...okay...Wow, that'll make things so much easier."

The only pair not happy to see each other were Tigress and Wu Tian, who sat opposite each other, arms crossed and murderously glaring at the other feline over the table.

Dalang sighed through his nose and muttered, "I think the world has gone mad."

Shifu muttered back, "I've a feeling it's only going to get worse."

"So let me see if we got this right," Dalang said.

"Okay..."

Dalang pointed at the female snow leopards. "Those are the Wu Sisters."

"That's right."

"And your wife, Wu Lien, is their mother."

"She is their mother as I am Tai Lung's father."

"So you're not the only red panda to raise snow leopards into kung fu warriors."

"Evidently not."

Dalang pursed his lips and sighed in tandem with Shifu. "And where is Aunt Wu?"

"With your son."

"Avoiding you."

"Most likely."

"Makes sense."

"It does, doesn't it?"

Dalang arched a brow. "I don't think you get my meaning. She's avoiding you because you're likely to blow this out of proportion."

Shifu slowly turned his head to stare at the tiger chef. The look on the red panda's face was incredulous as he demanded, "Blow this out of proportion...? The woman I married raised the three most notorious killers in the past half-century, and never told me. _And you think I'm overreacting_?"

"Shifu, did either of your kids turn out exactly the way you wanted them to?"

"Well, no..."

"Exactly."

"Are you forgetting the part where they tried to assassinate your wife?"

"If they really wanted her dead, they would've done that _first_ instead of trying to kidnap our son, which is the only thing that makes sense right now."

"And you're sure of this?"

"Shifu, I grew up in one of the most notorious crime families China has seen in centuries. Trust me, I would know."

Shifu sighed and stared back at the table, taking in the healers, the acupuncturists, and the two silent felines who probably would have killed each other by now if it weren't for the fact that rug beneath them was a wedding present for Tai Lung and Mei Xing. Evidently both females knew that blood was a bitch to get out of anything.

"So where do we go from here?" Dalang asked. "We can't kick them out..."

"Why not?"

"Because they go back to Koshchei, and he kills them. We've been over this: I don't want anymore blood on my hands."

Shifu nodded. "Fair enough. But they can't stay here; they're a danger to others, and it doesn't sit well with me if they walk around free."

"I'm not exactly getting the warm'n'fuzzies about this, myself," Dalang agreed. "But what choice do we have? They know what Koshchei's plans are..."

"No we don't," Tian stated quickly, shortly, never taking her eyes off Tigress. "He's kept everything close to the vest."

"In other words," Dalang asked, "He hasn't changed a bit in thirteen years?"

"Nope."

"And you said their army was how big?"

"About forty thousand, give or take. He's killed a few to make a point here and there."

"I wish I could say that surprised me."

"You and me both."

"He makes a good point though," Zhu piped up. "What _are_ we going to do? If the Boss finds out we failed..."

"The Boss isn't going to find out," Tian snapped at her sister.

"Seriously?" Jiang snorted. "The Boss knows everything."

"Why do I get the sneaking suspicion we're no longer talking about this Koshchei fellow?" Shifu asked suspiciously. This shut up the three snow leopards, who refused to say another word.

Tigress snorted, "Understand the only thing keeping me from killing all three of you right now is that it would greatly upset one of my closest friends."

"Um," Su Lin said, "Actually, blood doesn't bother me so much."

"Oh, no dear, I didn't mean you..."

"What the hell is going on?"

All eyes turned to the top of the stairs, where Mei Xing had paused, her amber eyes wide at the sight of the three assassins. The Wu Sisters likewise stared back at her, each one looking between her face and her huge belly. Tian now understood which of Tigress's 'friends' would be upset: "Hmm...alright, I'll grant you that. Upsetting a woman in her third trimester...generally not a good idea."

Mei Xing looked over at Dalang, then back at the three other snow leopardesses, then back to Dalang. "...Am I hallucinating, or is that...?"

"Yes, Mei, the Wu Sisters are sitting in our living room drinking tea and making friends...except with Tigress."

"Well yeah, that much is obvious. So...why are the most notorious assassins in China sitting in our living room drinking tea in the middle of the night?"

"Because they tried to assassinate my wife and kidnap my son."

"Oh." She shrugged. "Okay."

"What do you mean, _okay_?" Tigress snapped. "They tried to kill me!"

Tian sighed theatrically, "Let's get one thing straight, _bitch_...we only came for the brat, and we were kidnapping him for his own good."

Zhu tugged on her sister's sleeve and stage-whispered, "Um, sis? _Not helping_..."

"Koshchei has a hit on him," Tian finished quickly.

The room went completely silent, and all rage on Tigress's face...well, increased, to be perfectly honest. "_WHAT_?" she roared. Standing quickly, she ran for the stairs. Dalang only just managed to block her way. "Sweetie, sweetie, think about what you're doing—"

"I'm going to kill him!"

"Yeah, that's my worry."

"I know exactly what I'm doing—I'm ripping him apart!"

"Alone?"

"YES, ALONE!"

"Okay," Tian waved. "Your funeral!"

Before Tigress could turn around to snap back, Dalang grabbed her by the shoulders and held her firmly. "_Listen_ to me—you can't take on Koshchei alone, that's why we've been training."

"Shut _up_," she hissed, cocking her head in the assassins' direction. "They don't know—"

"What, that you're preparing for a counter-invasion using the villagers as your main defense?"

Tian and Zhu turned to stare in surprise at Jiang, who was leaning back in her chair, balancing on the back two legs with her own legs propped up on the table. The middle sister looked at the stunned faces around the room and barked, "_What_? I'm not an total idiot."

"Wait, you're planning to fight back?" Zhu asked.

"Wouldn't you?" Su Lin asked. "This is our home. This is the only home I've got left. I may not be as strong as Tigress, or as fast as Mantis, or even as skilled as Tai Lung...but I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep my home safe. I don't care how scared I get—that's true bravery, isn't it? Standing up for what you believe in even if you're standing alone, no matter what."

"That's very sweet, honey," Tian said. "But this is one of the worst assassins and killers in recent history—standing up alone isn't going to defeat him."

"And what do you know about that?" Tigress accused her. "You're working _with_ him! You're no better than he is!"

Tian stood, the fur on her neck and shoulders rising. "You take that back, right now."

"Over my dead body!"

"ENOUGH!"

The room was shocked into silence again, this time by Wu Lien. The red panda returned to the common room with a weepy, cranky Shang in her arms. She handed the fussing and over-tired baby off to Tian. "You woke him, you put him back to sleep! I'm through with trying!"

"I don't know anything about children!" she protested.

"If you'd _listened_ to me like a good daughter should, you might!"

"Oh don't you _dare_ start that 'filial daughter' shit—"

Mei Xing raised two fingers to her lips and blew a loud, sharp whistle. Everyone cringed at the sound, and when she was satisfied she had their attention, she said, "'Kay, couple suggestions? One, Tigress, take Shang to his crib and put him to bed, he always listens to you. Auntie, stop harping on your daughters, it's one of the reasons I'm not speaking to my family. Shifu, I don't give a flying frick how mad you are at Auntie, you get over it and focus on training Dalang and getting ready for Koshchei's arrival. Dalang," she leveled a glare at him and said, "I can't find the cast iron skillet you use for desserts. I want to make rice pudding, and I can't find it anywhere."

"Again? You just had-"

"_Cravings_!" she snapped.

"It's in the sink!" he quickly answered.

"Thanks." She turned to walk back down the stairs and called back to the Wu Sisters. "Pudding, anyone?"

"If you're offering," Jiang said, raising her hand.

Tian glared at her sister. "How can you be so blasé about this?"

"What? I'm hungry."

"Ugh, I can't believe this!" Tian said, handing Shang off to his mother.

"_You_ can't believe it?" Tigress demanded.

"Tigress?" Mei Xing called, "Put your damn kid to bed before I come up there..."

Tigress stopped herself from snapping back, took her son out of Tian's arms, and turned round to head back to her room, muttering, "...lucky you're my sister-in-law..."

After she quitted the room, Mantis dared to be the first to speak. "So...game plan? You girls on our side, or his?"

"Which one keeps us from getting killed?" Zhu asked.

"We can't make promises," Shifu asked. "The question remains who you fear more: the Army and the Emperor's laws...or Koshchei."

They didn't bother to think it over: "Emperor's side," they chorused.

"Forget it."

Dalang groaned and hid his face in his hands. Tigress glared across the room at Tian, who snarled back at her. Closing the door behind her, Tigress stormed across the room and got right into Tian's face. "Under no circumstances will I _ever_ trust you. The minute I turn my back, you'll put a knife through it..."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Tian sneered.

"You give me one excuse, one _single_ reason to take you out—"

A sharp scream from below shocked the females out of what was sure to be another row. Dalang bounded down the stairs in record time as the rest of the household followed. By the time they got downstairs, they were already too late.

"Mei Xing!" Tigress shouted. Time slowed. All she saw was Gao Ming hovering over the pregnant feline, a look of total shock and horror on Mei Xing's face. "MEI XING!"

Then Gao Ming fell sideways, landing hard on his back in the middle of the kitchen. The knife Mei Xing was using to cut up fruits for the rice pudding was stuck to the hilt in the elephant's chest.

"My herbs!" Su Lin shouted. "Someone get my kit! I can save him!"

Wu Lien ran to get the panda's medical supplies, and Su Lin knelt by the elephant's prone form. Pressing down on the wound as hard as she could, she tried to stop the blood gushing from the wound.

Mei Xing shook like a leaf, color drained from her already pale face, and she would have collapsed if Dalang and Zhu had not caught her in time. "It was an accident...He...he ran into my knife. I was cutting apples, heard a noise, and turned around...and he was...I swear I didn't mean...oh gods..."

Tian stood over the body, looking down at Su Lin's efforts to save the elephant. Tigress watched carefully as the snow leopard assassin knelt to pick up something from Gao's hand. A crumpled piece of paper and a knife. Tian flattened out the parchment and read the scrawled characters on the leaf. Then with a savage growl, she crumpled the paper, roughly shoved Su Lin out of the way, and in one fluid, graceful moment, whipped out her own knife and slit it across Gao's throat.

Su Lin screamed in horror as blood gushed, and even Tian's sisters were not immune to their own shock at their sister's savagery. Tian was seething, gritting her teeth in a way none had seen her before. Normally calm and collected, now she was enraged. To finish the job as the elephant shuddered into his last death throes, she ripped the kitchen knife out of his chest, and replaced it with her own, making sure to twist the blade in the wound.

Mei Xing had to turn away from the sight, but the dry heaving was very obvious. Zhu helped her sit, and both she and Jiang started fussing over her, Jiang offering some smelling salts she always kept on her.

Tigress stared in shock at Tian. "What was _that_?"

Tian straightened and handed her the crumpled paper. "This was no accident. He was here to kill _her_," she said, pointing to Mei Xing. "That paper has direct orders, signed by Captain Zang Deshi, instructing this man to kill a pregnant woman."

Now Mei Xing looked like she might seriously faint. Su Lin covered her mouth in horror, and now looked at the dead elephant with whole new eyes. _How_, she wondered. _How could someone so honorable attempt such a thing? How could an honorable person agree to follow such an order? _

Tigress was similarly in shock, but the paper wasn't lying. It was Zang's signature at the bottom, authorizing it. "I don't...I don't understand..." she said breathlessly.

"What's to understand?" Tian snapped. "_This_ is the real reason we came to the valley in the first place—Zang's got a hit on Tai Lung, and we're going to take him down."

"Shut up!" Zhu snapped at her sister. "Don't tell them!"

"I'm not telling them everything. Give her to her family," she said, motioning to Mei Xing, "We need to go, now." She turned her attention back to her enemy. "Leave my knife sticking into him, and spread the word that we're here in the village."

"Are you insane?" Jiang hissed. "That would blow our cover!"

"And it would keep _her_ from being tried for murder in a military court," Tian said, looking right at Mei Xing. "Zang's not going to care if it was an accident. He'll think you did it intentionally, and try to kill you through the courts. Tell them we killed this one, spread the word. Zang will get nervous, he'll slip, then we'll have him."

Tigress stared at her long-time enemy, and started seeing her in a new light. "You're taking the blame for this? _Willingly_?"

Tian shrugged. "Why not? It wouldn't be the first time." Then the elder sister looked to the doorway, right at the woman who had raised her. Wu Lien held Su Lin's medicine box in nerveless hands, but it was the look in her green eyes that still burned Tian to the core. That questioning, searching, pleading look. The same look her mother had given her the night she returned to tell her goodbye. And just like that night, so many years ago, the same conversation played out again.

"Just tell me why," Wu Lien said.

"I can't," Tian said.

"Tian, _please_, I'm your mother—don't be so obstinate and just _tell me_!"

"I can't tell you. Not yet. Just trust me." She stopped her before Wu Lien could say anything more. "Mother, _please_...trust me. Trust _us_. We know what we're doing." Without giving her mother the chance to stop her, she grabbed her sisters and ran out the front door.

And just like that, they were gone into the night.

The silence in the kitchen was only broken by Dalang, who gripped Mei Xing's shoulders. "You're sleeping in bed with Tigress tonight, no arguments. I'll go alert the guards and tell the magistrate what happened."

"What will you tell them?" Mei Xing asked, gasping for breath.

"Exactly what happened: Gao Ming was assassinated by the Wu Sisters."

"We have a problem," the spotted feline said.

"Not really—the sisters seemed to be okay with taking the blame."

"No, not that," she said breathlessly, pressing a hand against her stomach. When she looked into Dalang's face, she said shakily, "I think I'm in labor."

* * *

No one was more surprised by the news of Gao Ming's death than Zang Deshi. He, Quon, and Liu left the Jade Palace to identify the body at the courthouse at dawn. The black horse took in everything...especially the knife that had been pulled from the elephant's chest.

The horse seethed. _The Wu Sisters. Those whores!_

"I'm so sorry for your loss."

Zang turned to the one who had raised the alarm. Yu Su Lin stood over the body, still dressed in her blood-stained clothes. Even her hands and arms were still red, as if scrubbing had been unable to cleanse the blood. She sighed. "I only wish I could have done more to save him."

"You did what you could, ma'am," Liu told her. "We appreciate any effort to save him."

"Tell me exactly what you saw," Zang demanded.

Su Lin pursed her lips at his order. She waited until he remembered his manners: "Please."

It bothered Su Lin to no end how easily the lie came out. "I came downstairs to make a snack for Mei Xing – she's been on bedrest, so I cook her meals now. I heard a noise outside, so I went to go investigate, and Mr. Gao Ming was in the courtyard. He said he had business, but I don't know why he was there so late. I invited him inside, but...oh gods, it was horrible." She buried her face in her hands, mostly to hide the blush that suddenly crept up to her face. "They came out of nowhere. Out of nowhere, then back into the night. I tried to stop the bleeding, used every herb I had—" which was not true, of course, but just to keep her story straight, she burned all those herbs in case Zang got suspicious. "—but it wasn't enough. Captain...I am so sorry..."

Thankfully, he believed her. She was a healer, it was in her nature to help those who needed it, regardless of their allegiance. Why would she have any reason to lie? Su Lin waited until the officers and the cadet had wrapped the body in a shroud and carried it away for burial before she excused herself and went home, grateful it went so well.

When Su Lin returned to the Long and Feng Cafe to begin her shift, she paused to talk to Dalang, "He bought it."

"Good," he said, loudly chopping vegetables to keep people from eavesdropping.

"What's the plan from here on out?"

"Orders from Tigress: keep acting like nothing is out of the ordinary. We keep training, keep preparing for the invasion. Business as usual."

Su Lin nodded and reached for her apron to begin waiting tables. She needed the work to take her mind off things. The panda avoided Mr. Ping, who kept casting worried glances between the tiger, the female panda, and the odd stain that had suddenly appeared on his floor...and not for the first time, nor the last, would Su Lin be grateful the goose was such a heavy sleeper.

* * *

Mei Xing's eyes fluttered open. She was in her bed, no, she was in Tigress's bed, like Dalang had suggested. She was exhausted, and could barely remember a thing from the night before. The cramps she had gotten were gone now, and her whole body felt like it had suffered a brutal ordeal.

She started to cry.

She couldn't wait, the baby couldn't wait, and now Tai Lung had completely missed the birth of his first—

"What the hell!" she gasped and threw the covers off her body. Her belly was still big and round. She pressed her hand against her stomach. She didn't let out the breath she was holding until after she felt the baby kick. "Oh thank Heaven..."

"Nope, thank me and Mantis," Su Lin said, poking her head into the room to check on her charge. The panda's apron was stained with spilled noodles, but otherwise she looked cheerful. "His quick thinking kept us all from losing it. And I recognized it for what it was."

"What was it? Why am I still pregnant? I was having contractions..."

Su Lin stepped in and hugged her best friend, saying, "No you weren't. It was a false alarm. Women get them all the time near the end of pregnancy. It's a lot more common than you'd think."

Mei Xing let out a sigh of relief and sank back into the pillows. "Thank the gods...so there's still time."

"Yes, but not long. You're pretty far along now." Su Lin sat on the edge of the bed and handed Mei Xing a bowl of noodles. "Here, fresh from the pot. We were all worried about you."

"I was plenty damn worried, myself," she said, sitting up and gratefully sipping the broth. She looked down at her stomach and sighed in relief again. "Thank you. And when you see Mantis, thank him for me, too."

Su Lin beamed. "He knows. But I'll tell him when he and Monkey come down for Mr. Ping's Dragon Warrior Dumpling special. How's the soup?"

The snow leopardess lowered the bowl and sighed contentedly. "Really hits the spot. Thanks again." She paused, reaching for the chopsticks to eat the noodles. "What happened to the elephant?"

"Gao? Zang collected him, he's probably buried somewhere now. I wager he wanted to make it quick—I feel for poor Gao's family."

"What about Gao?"

"Absolutely not!" the panda snapped. Mei Xing stared at her in surprise. She had never seen this side of Su Lin before. "I don't care _one_ _lick_ for what happened to him! He tried to kill you, and he tried to do it because he was ordered to. Ooh...and that Zang, he makes me so mad I could just...ARG!"

Mei Xing jumped a little when the panda let out a sudden roar of anger. "...Su? Please never do that again. You're...kinda scary when you're mad."

Su Lin's temper quickly abated. "Oh! I'm sorry, I'll try to watch my temper."

"Don't worry about it...just promise me that when you _do_ get mad...try to take it out on someone who deserves it."

"I couldn't do that! It's part of my healer's code: harm none, and help those who need it, even if they are an enemy."

"Even when it's hard?"

"Especially when it's hard. Who else would?" Su Lin stared down at the floor, then straightened up and stood. "I'd better get back downstairs. If you need anything, and I mean _anything_, just holler."

* * *

The fallout from the night before hadn't completely dissipated by noon that day. Wu Lien was in no mood for classes, despite the great need to hold them. She sequestered herself in her office, looking over the star charts and casting lots to see what the future held. She checked her almanac for the day before: "A bad day for travel in the direction of the Rat...good day to make a new purchase...expect a visitor from your past..."

Why hadn't she seen it coming? She checked her horoscope: the same thing. "Expect unexpected company towards the end of your day". The red panda crossed her arms and lowered her head. It had been ten years since she had last seen her daughters. Where had she gone wrong?

Someone cleared their throat. Wu sighed and raised her head. She knew who it was before even turning to the door.

"Alright, I'll explain," Wu snapped at her husband. "Not sure how much good it'll do, since you've clearly already passed judgment on me!"

Shifu said nothing, refusing even to look at her. He glowered, staring straight ahead. The only indication he gave that he was listening was a slight twitch in his ear. Wu took a deep breath and began,

"Yes, I raised them; I ran the safe house their mother came to. I didn't know her history and she never offered it. She said came to me for protection, she and her three young daughters; at the time, Tian was scarcely four years old, Jiang was two and a half, and Zhu was a newborn." As she began telling her story, the anger slowly ebbed from her voice like a tide moving out to sea. "Their mother went out looking for work one day and just never returned. I still don't know what happened. I kept those girls there with me, I raised them, gave them the best home I could. They were as close to daughters as I've ever gotten. I didn't want to see them as 'my girls', because for so long, I believed their mother would come back and take them with her. That all changed the day Zhu first called me 'Mommy'…"

She had gone quiet, and he swore he heard a tell-tale sniffle before she asked, "Do you have any idea what that feels like? To have some little stranger trust you so very much and look at you like…like…gods, I can't even describe it…"

He could. He remembered. A certain spotted little stranger had taught him that lesson. A little stranger that showed up at his door one cold night, and he too had held on to the infant, believing that whoever the parents were, that they would come back. Only they didn't…at least not for four decades. But Shifu knew that feeling. He knew how it was to be exhausted and sleep-deprived, running after a toddler from dawn until dusk, struggling to juggle career and family as a single parent, all the while coming to know this little person who had suddenly become the center of his world. He knew how pointless it could be to teach a two-year-old manners and discipline. He knew how unrewarding parenting could be at times. He knew—and sympathized with—how easy it was to get frustrated and lose one's temper and unfairly take it out on the child. He remembered the tantrums, the whining, the child learning words that he had no business using until adulthood, the picky eating and spoiled demands.

He also remembered the first time he'd been called "Baba". Somehow all the hardships and trials parenting brought could be nullified with just that single word. That and knowing, even at their worst, that little stranger still loved you, and you still loved them.

"When Zhu turned five, I knew I had a problem on my hands," Shifu's wife continued. "I knew I wouldn't be around forever, and that I needed to do something so that my girls could either be taken care of, or take care of themselves."

"Naturally," he interrupted, "You opted for the latter." He swore he saw the ghost of a smile on his wife's lips.

"Naturally," she agreed. "I started schooling them—I hired a tutor, unheard of for girls, I know. But I wanted them to know their numbers and characters, I wanted them to know anything and everything. 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world', and all that; children learn their first lessons from their mothers, but I wanted them to know so much more. Tian—what a bright, gifted girl!—found my fans one day…little brat had a habit with picking locks; I should have seen it coming…"

She shook her head ruefully, laughing softly. "She wanted to learn to dance. Well, little girls typically want to do what other little girls do, and her sisters wanted to learn as well…but Shifu, I was conflicted. After Jiao Shen destroyed my school and my reputation, I vowed to never teach Lotus Style again. But the more I taught my girls, the more I realized that they were not what men wanted—the kind of men I wanted _for_ them would not have wanted them. They needed to be completely self-sufficient. So I taught them everything.

"I taught them everything I knew about dance and kung fu; I taught them how to read and write; I taught them subtle arts and graces. If they were ever curious about something, I encouraged them to learn about it. Jiang wanted to learn medicine; I sent her to train with an apothecary. Zhu wanted to learn about acupuncture; I sent her to study at an acupuncturist's. Tian wanted to be a dancer and a court singer, so I made sure she played as many instruments as she could possibly learn. And gods, was she glorious! She could play the most heart-rending music on a flute, and when she played the harp, you believed in magic and true love again…

"The girls were teenagers when I heard the news: Tian had been invited to perform with the provincial opera. Tian wouldn't go unless her sisters could go with her. I saw no problem with it because I knew Jiang and Zhu would benefit from the cosmopolitan atmosphere in the provincial capital; they would learn so much more there than they could in our small village. They got to the capital and began their own careers, but they visited so often, it felt like they had never left. I was _so_ proud of them…"

"What happened?" he found himself asking. He could foretell the answer, and that it wouldn't be a happy one.

"One of the magistrate's men fell ill, quite suddenly and very suspiciously. It was quite a mystery for the longest time. One of Tian's last letters to me told me that she'd offered her sisters' expertise in treating him. Less than a week after starting the acupuncture and medicines my girls gave him, he started to recover. Then just as suddenly, he died."

"He could have died from anything," Shifu said.

"Shifu, he was scarcely thirty years old. Healthy thirty-year-old men don't just up and die like that." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself of that, and he knew she still had doubts about the whole thing. "Immediately, of course, suspicion fell on my daughters. But instead of staying and clearing their names, they ran."

"Well of _course_ they ran," Shifu snorted.

"Innocent people _don't run_, Shifu!"

"They do it all the time! If the same thing had happened to me, I would have run, too!"

"The point is they _lied_ to me!" she snapped, but she didn't look mad at him. If there was anyone she was angry at…it was herself. "They _ran_, and before long I started hearing rumors about them. I didn't want to hear it, I didn't, but they became too ugly and gruesome to deny it—they became assassins. They were _killing_ innocent people, and laughing about it! You can believe all you want, Shifu, but I _never_ raised my daughters to be murderesses!"

She groaned, holding her head in her hands. "Jiang could have been a brilliant doctor, Zhu could have been the best acupuncturist in the county—hell, the province!—and Tian was so talented she could have danced and sang for the Emperor himself! And instead, what are they? _What are they_?" she demanded. "I raised those girls to be ladies, and they turned into _cross-dressing man-eaters_!"

Shifu pursed his lips.

"What?" Wu asked.

"Nothing."

"'Nothing', my eye. What are you thinking? What were you going to say?"

"Eh…" he paused. "Just so we're clear, you will listen to my opinion, and not hate me for being honest?"

"I will not hate you—I married you," she said. "Hating you would go against my vows." She said this last sentence with heavy emphasis, as if daring him to violate his own vows. He wouldn't.

"And no matter what, you hold those vows sacred?"

"Of course! Why?" she asked suspiciously.

"Lotus, darling—"

"Oh no," she exhaled; she knew what was coming. Whenever he called her "darling", it was usually followed by something she would have a hard time hearing.

"Lotus, when I first met you—well, when I first _argued_ with you—I had a lot of first impressions to get over. To briefly summarize what I'm about to say…now knowing the full history of the Wu Sisters…I can't say I'm surprised."

"Not surprised?" she blinked, astonished. "But—but I raised them to be—"

"I know what you raised them to be, but 'gentle ladies' is not what you intended; not really. On the surface, yes, you wanted to teach them all social graces and skills that would distinguish them and make them valuable. But if they came to hate men and patriarchy in general…"

"…You're saying that's _my_ fault?"

"Lets face it—you blamed men, _all_ men, for your troubles, especially Jiao Shen. Honestly, I look at those women and see how they act, and I recall their _modus operandi_, honestly…it all sounds like you."

"You're saying _I _turned them into murderers?"

"They attack and kill only men—never women and children. For so long it's been a mystery why they hated men so much…now it all makes sense."

"But you're still saying it's my fault."

"I'm saying nothing of the sort! If you want to believe it, then so be it. I came here for an explanation, and I got it. I also came for an apology, but, in light of this new evidence, I've decided to forgive you."

That was the wrong thing to say. It sounded better in his head. But now that the words had left his mouth, he realized how awful they sounded.

Wu turned on him. "You...forgive me? You _forgive_ me?" she stood on her stool and pointed at him. "How _dare_ you—come into my office, _my_ school, and tell me you forgive me for something that I will _never_ admit as a mistake!"

"You trained the three worst assassins in the empire!" he accused.

"And _you_ trained the worst mass-murderer in this valley's history!"

It was a comment that hurt them both, striking like a knife to the heart. It hurt Shifu, of course, because even now, he still blamed himself for Tai Lung's rampage, even though he knew the snow leopard was accountable for his actions. But to hear such an accusation from a woman he had vowed to love and protect for the remainder of his life...

And it hurt Wu to think of her nephew as a murderer...and that she had twisted logic just to win an argument. She had done many things in her life that she regretted, but knowing that pained look on her husband's face was _her_ fault...she reacted the only way she knew how.

"Get out," she growled.

Shifu didn't argue with her. He turned his back and left the room without saying goodbye. As soon as the door slammed behind him, Wu desperately flipped ahead in her almanac. Something about resolved conflicts..._something_. Instead, her horoscope in the coming days reflected nothing but hard work, bad luck, and inauspicious times. Right before the Winter Solstice, though, there was one shining ray of hope: "Expect many a blessing, in many forms".

Good, she was going to need it.

* * *

"What happened last night? Where did you go?"

Tian was not willing to tell Zi Hao anything, but he was quickly grating on her last nerve. All she had given him were curt answers to every one of his probing questions, until finally Zhu stepped in and said, "She went to find a healer for medicine to, ah, 'stem the red tide', if you know what I mean."

It took Zi Hao a moment or two, but once he got it, he wisely stayed out of Tian's way. And the others' way, just in case.

Tian was in a foul mood, but for many reasons. One, their plan had been screwed up and gotten far more complicated. Two, they missed the rendezvous with their boss, who would not be happy about it. Three, they failed their first objective. Four, she ran into her mother.

Ugh, ten damn years and the old bat was still as hard on her as she had ever been. She couldn't even look her daughter in the eye! From what Tian knew about Shifu and his relationship with Tai Lung (which was empire-wide knowledge at this point), Wu Lien and the Grand Master were made for each other. _And together, they make their children's lives hell,_ she dourly thought.

As she sulked and plotted their next move, Jiang and Zhu were also trying to keep Zi Hao occupied and away from their sister so she could think. That meant conducting even the most inane conversations with him, including one that took Jiang off-guard.

"So how long have you been together?"

"All our lives."

Zi Hao gave Jiang an odd look. "How is that possible? You only met him two months ago."

It was Jiang's turn to return the stare. "Who are you talking about?"

"Duo. Who did you think I was talking about, your sisters?"

"Well obviously."

Zhu coughed. "I've actually been wondering that, too."

"Oh jeez, not you too!" Jiang groaned. "Look, there's nothing going on there."

"Nothing?"

"None. Duo and I are just friends."

"That's impossible," Zi Hao said. "Men and women can't be friends."

"Who says? Duo and I get along just fine. And if you're implying that...wait, what _are_ you implying anyway?"

The black wolf snorted. "Isn't it obvious? Everyone in the horde thinks you're banging each other."

Jiang's jaw dropped. "I—it—_what_?"

"So...you're not?" Zhu asked. "That's weird. I mean, you spend all your free time with him, you're always enjoying each other's company. You hardly ever smile unless he's around, or unless you're thinking about him...like right now."

Jiang wiped the slight smile off her face. "No I'm not. I was just thinking about..."

"Save it. You like him."

"No. No I don't. Just drop it. With things the way they are, entering any kind of romantic relationship is out of the question."

"So that's it? You're just giving up on him?"

"I'm not giving up crap!" Jiang growled. "He's a friend, a _good_ friend, someone I can mock other people with. Maybe enjoy a drink or two. That's it."

Tian broke the conversation up with a quick, terse "Sisters, I need you", and Jiang and Zhu quickly followed to a private conference with their sister. Tian collected them in a clearing surrounded by pine trees, and made sure to check their surroundings before going forward:

"I managed to get word to our Boss, who got back to us. Our objective now is our first objective: Zang. The Jiao baby is safe, now that his parents are aware of the danger to him. The Valley knows we're here and that we've made an appearance. That part of our plan worked."

"What about Koshchei?" Zhu asked. "He'll be mad when he finds out. He was expecting a sneak attack."

"Technically, he's still going to get it," Jiang said. "The valley knows _we_ are here, but they have no idea the invasion is coming."

"But they do!" Zhu said. "You heard what was said last night: they knew he was coming, and they're preparing for it. We're in a hard place now."

"How do you mean?" Tian asked.

Zhu stared her eldest sister down. "We're enemies of the state, and if we turn ourselves in, we'll be killed; but if we go back to Koshchei, _he'll_ kill us for our failure."

"Zi Hao failed him, and he's still kickin'," Jiang noted.

"Yes, but I think he expected Hao to fail. At least that was Lang's hope."

"What, that Hao would be killed by the Army back there?" Tian asked.

"Makes sense," Jiang said. "That's what we all expected. Remember what Lang told us when he gave us this assignment? He's been trying to get back at Zi Hao for the hell he put him through." Jiang sighed, "And after hearing some of those things from Duo...I can't say I blame the kid."

"We need Hao to carry out this plan," Tian said. "As much loyalty as we feel for Lang, we have to think of the bigger picture. Hao will be useful to us."

"He might be useful, but I don't trust him," Zhu said. She turned to her sister Tian. "We should never have gotten involved in all this. Now we're in too deep."

"You let me worry about that."

"No," Zhu hissed. "No, whatever you're planning, we want in on it. Don't keep secrets from us, Tian, not ones that could get us all killed."

Tian looked at Jiang. "Is this how you feel?"

Jiang stood with arms akimbo. "I generally like living, as odious as it gets sometimes. So, yeah, I want in, too."

The eldest sister sighed deeply, her shoulders heaving with the breath. "Alright. The Boss told us last night that other agents would be sent in if we didn't get back after an hour. New correspondance: we're going in anyway. We've waited long enough. Zang needs to be taken out, as soon as possible."

* * *

Elsewhere, another feline had also made a similar oath.

"Arg, fine, that's it, I give up!"

Shifu's eye twitched and his ears ticked in annoyance. "One must be _patient_ when developing one's flexibility. You can't perfect lotus position in two weeks."

Dalang still struggled to get into the full lotus position, and his knees were starting to hurt. Nearing his thirtieth year of existence, the tiger chef was not in the best of shape to begin with. But Shifu, fortunately, knew that what his newest student lacked in flexibility, he made up for in strength. Hanging sandbags made perfect punching bags, almost obliterated each time Dalang threw punches for five minutes. He was brutal, but due to Shifu's instruction and Sonam's own training, he had learned to show some restraint.

While Dalang wanted to stay home that day, the Wu Sisters' arrival forced Shifu's hand. Koshchei was closer than any of them expected, and that bothered the red panda. Despite the continuing status reports about the villagers' training, he knew they were nowhere near ready to take on anyone or anything as large as the army purported to invade them. So against his better judgment, and against his feelings, he ordered Dalang to wrap up his training that day, to step it up and finally introduce swords into the regimine.

"Remember, the enemy is not expecting mercy. They will give you no mercy, so mercy in return will surprise them," Shifu said, knowing from experience.

Dalang sighed, but didn't say anything to refute him. In the tiger's experience, if anyone showed mercy, it was the quickest way to get killed. But, Shifu had made it this far to live to be so old for a reason. Sonam too, who was...perhaps not so merciful as Shifu. But Dalang started wondering about Shifu. Was there more to what the red panda was saying? Every piece of advice, every admonition, came with it the weight of years of experience, painful, bitter experience. So what exactly was he hiding?

"Ah, there's Sonam now with the practice swords. This part of our lesson has concluded." As the red panda stood, he offered Dalang a hand, and as he did so, asked, "How did it go this morning?"

"Mei's fine, Su said it was a false alarm. She's not in labor."

Shifu let out a sigh of relief. "Good...that's very good."

"What about Zang?"

Shifu swiveled his ears to check there was no one to eavesdrop before he whispered, "He claimed the body this morning. Gao will be buried in the valley and come Spring, his coffin will be sent to his family. In the meantime, he bought the story about the Wu Sisters."

"Again, what's to buy? That is exactly what happened."

"And that's the story we're sticking to, let us never speak of it again."

Something about Shifu's tone this morning told the tiger chef that now was not a good time to argue. "Sure, sounds good."

"Good. Sonam! Set up the course, I want to see how he's improved. Not _that_ course," he said to Dalang's terrified expression. "The one Sonam set up for you."

Dalang's eyes shifted over to the private courtyard outside the Training Hall, where Sonam was setting up various dummies, wooden apparati, and other instruments of, let's face it, death and torture.

"Can I try the obstacle course inside again? I'll do better this time, I swear," he begged.

"Dalang, his course is not that bad."

"Oi, rodent!" Sonam shouted. "Give me a hand with these swinging axes, they look t'be jammed!"

Shifu looked over to where Sonam was working, then said with a cursory glance to Dalang, "I'll talk to him about it." The red panda moved away to the sidelines to watch the felines spar, and kept his distance; he swore it was so that he could better see Dalang's every move, but the tiger had his doubts about that.

"Gentlemen, pick up your swords," Shifu ordered. Sonam picked up one fake wooden sparring sword for himself, and Dalang picked up two identical bamboo staves with which to practice, to prepare him for using the blades Sonam had engineered for him.

"Ready?" Sonam asked.

Dalang held up the two wooden swords, "Ready as I'm gonna be."

Sonam held his sword front and center, Dalang crossed his own in front of his body, waiting for the elder to make a move. In one sudden movement, Sonam leapt forward and clashed his training sword against Dalang's. The tiger blocked with one, swiped down with the other, turning on one foot to duck Sonam's next swing. He thrust out one sword and barely caught a fold of Sonam's sleeve. The snow leopard jumped out of the way, twisting his body to stab at the tiger, who blocked the thrust with both swords crisscrossed in front of him. He lifted one above his head and swung it down and around in a wide arc. Sonam barely had time to duck. If they had been fighting with real swords, that swing could have easily killed him on the spot.

The snow leopard jumped out of the way to give himself his second wind. Dalang stood back, waiting for him to make another attack. Shifu's advice to play more defensive was working. Sonam was making more effort to gain ground than Dalang was to defend it.

Sonam struck again, Dalang deflected the blow, again turning on the ball of his foot forward, bringing his other sword around, slamming the wooden bar right into the snow leopard's unprotected stomach.

Sonam gasped, jumping back and sucking in air while struggling to stand upright.

"Are you all right?" Shifu called out.

"'Course," the spotted feline said scathingly. "I'm just writhing in pain for the hell of it."

Shifu ignored him. "Good job, Dalang. You're performing beautifully. You've come a long way in two weeks."

"You think so?" he asked.

"Of course. Sonam used to easily kick you tail, now you're just as good as he is."

Sonam collected himself and looked between the two of them. "No, he's better. He's surpassed me. Just one thing to remember," he said, then struck out with his practice sword and swiped at Dalang's legs, sweeping the tiger right off his feet. Dalang landed hard on his back. Gloating down at the winded tiger, the snow leopard finished: "Age and treachery beats youth and skill every time."

Dalang coughed. "I'll...keep that in mind."

"You damn well better. Koshchei's older than I am—think how treacherous he's gotten with age. He isn't a strong as he was in his prime, which means he's gotten smarter."

Dalang felt the blood draining from his face at the thought. Even Shifu felt uncomfortable knowing this. Sonam however didn't appear too worried. "Fortunately, you have the benefit of two treacherous old farts to give you tips."

"I wish I could say that was encouraging."

Sonam ignored him, instead looking out into the distance and narrowing his one good eye. "Heads up, mates, we've got company."

Shifu turned and inwardly groaned. Zang Deshi was climbing the steps to the training hall, surrounded with an aura of determination, as well as his remaining subordinates. The red panda silently cursed, while Dalang picked himself up and brushed dirt off his clothes.

"Good morning, Captain," Shifu greeted as the horse crossed the threshhold.

Zang snorted. "I fail to see the goodness of this day."

"Yes, we heard about your loss. You have our condolences."

Zang said nothing, glaring at Sonam before turning his sharp gaze around the courtyard. "You are all training this morning."

"We are," Sonam said curtly. "We are training Dalang here, and I aim to pass on my skills to him."

"I see. Why is he training?" he asked, directing his question to Shifu.

Shifu narrowed his eyes at the horse. "Why are you so curious?"

"It is almost as if he's preparing for battle..." Zang said, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"Yes, yes I am," Dalang said with a straight face, and Shifu felt his heart stop. "I am training for battle, this is all just some wild conspiracy to kill you and take over the empire and rule you all with an iron fist. Mwahaha. See, I'm even growing a dastardly mustache like Cao Cao so you can tell I'm a bad guy."

Sonam bit his lip to keep from laughing, but he couldn't hold back the snort. Dalang gave Zang the best cheeky grin he could muster. "Cap'n, I just put on a lot of weight after marriage. This is for exercise."

"Exercise." Zang didn't sound convinced.

Dalang countered, "Dude, have you _seen_ my wife? I gotta keep this bod in shape to keep her around, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Why with swords?"

"What swords?"

"You're holding those bamboo staves like swords."

Dalang shrugged. "Seemed like fun."

"It has nothing to do with the fact that twin short swords were your specialty in the Jiao horde?"

"It's a good cardio workout. You should try it sometime."

Zang bared his teeth and got into Dalang's face. "I know you are up to something, something very suspicious. And knowing your history—"

"I thought all that was forgiven," the tiger said with a straight face.

"Forgiven, Mr. Jiao, not forgotten."

Zang backed up a bit as Dalang hissed at him: "You think I forgot what my childhood was like, what my _family_ was like? You think I've forgotten what awful things they did, the lives they destroyed? They almost destroyed _me_, but I came back from that brink, but not without a lot of help. I may not _like_ my family, but for better or worse, I still love them, and no matter what you or anyone else says, I will not be accused of being an unfilial son. I may love them, but that doesn't mean I'm going to turn out like them, because I learn from their mistakes, and I learned what not to do. I learned how _not_ to be a husband, how _not_ to be a father, and I learned how _not_ to treat people I consider family. So if you have anything else you'd like to say to criticize _any_ member of my surrogate family, or _any_ of my friends, you, sir, can shove it where the sun don't shine."

Zang could tell from the looks on Shifu and Sonam's faces that they did not in any way endorse this outburst. Sonam, in fact, had pinched the bridge of his nose and was avoiding all eye contact with the black horse. Dalang was still staring him down, but took a step back at the last minute.

"I'm going to repeat what I said before. You drop that attitude, _right_ _now_. And you come anywhere near my family again, I will take you out."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." But Zang couldn't suppress the shudder he got when those sharp yellow-green eyes bored into him. The tiger dropped his voice and whispered, "We found the note."

Zang suddenly paled.

"You give me one reason, _one more reason_, and officer or no officer, pardon or no pardon, there is nothing that will save you. _Nothing_." Dalang's eyes flicked from the horse's face to over his shoulder, seeing the two remaining soldiers under Zang's command watching this exchange with nervous glances. Cadet Hu looked worried, while Corporal Liu looked suspicious. Dalang gave both of them a sharp look that made them bite their tongues before he turned back to their captain. "Now get out of this courtyard."

* * *

"What did he mean back there?"

"What?" Zang asked, turning to Liu.

They were back in their quarters in the Lower Palace, far away from the scary warriors training high above them, and, Zang thought, far enough away that no one would eavesdrop. The chestnut horse narrowed his eyes at his leader. "What did he mean by, 'we found the note'?"

_How had he heard that?_ Zang wondered. "That is none of your concern."

"Sir, he just threatened your life. This is something we need to know about."

"This is none of your concern," he repeated.

"The hell it isn't."

Zang turned fully around and glared at the other horse. "You forget yourself, Corporal."

Quon was staring in shock and awe at the corporal, who had crossed his arms over his chest and openly challenged his commanding officer. "You haven't been forthcoming with us at all. Kong is dead, now Gao is dead, and you know the reasons why. Both of them were killed by knives, perhaps the same type of knife, and you had better tell us right now—"

"You dare to give me an order!"

"—Are we being hunted by the Wu Sisters?"

Zang inwardly relaxed. He still didn't know. Good. "I don't know."

Liu narrowed his eyes. "Not good enough. Are we or are we not going to be assassinated?"

"If those harlots were going to assassinate you, they would have done so by now. Corporal, trust me, you are no threat to them."

"But he is a threat to you," Quon growled, suddenly finding a backbone.

Zang rounded on the tiger. "You forget yourself as well, Cadet."

"Why was Gao there so late?" Quon badgered. "Why were the Wu Sisters there? Why are they even in the Valley? Matter of fact, why was anyone in that house up so late?"

"You have no right to question my orders..."

"You _ordered_ him down there?" Liu asked. "Why?"

"That is none of your concern," Zang said as he turned away.

Liu snorted and stomped over, grabbing the black horse by the shoulder and throwing him up against the wall. "My friends and colleagues are dead, dropping like flies, and I want some godsdamned accountability! Why was Gao there? What were his orders?"

"I owe you no explanation. Now release me, or you will be courtmarshalled, and hanged. Are we clear?"

Liu responded in a way that shocked both other soldiers. He pressed his arm against the other horse's throat, and pressed harder and harder. "Tell. Me. Now," he seethed.

Quon spoke up as Zang gurgled. "Ah, Corporal—"

"Quon, _shut up_. What'll it be, Cap'n? You gonna come clean?" Liu looked right into his superior's eyes, and then something clicked. Zang could see it, Quon could see it, and suddenly, Liu's anger melted away into absolute horror. He stepped away from the black warhorse, and gasped. "He was there to kill her."

Zang rubbed his throat, sucking down air and coughing. Liu continued to accuse him, "You ordered him to kill Tai Lung's wife? You ordered him to kill his wife and unborn child?"

When Zang finally recovered himself, he stood upright and sneered, "One less monster to be let loose into the world. What other kind of future would it have with a whore of a mother and a murderer for a father?"

"That is not your call to make!" Liu shouted. He started shaking his head in disgust. "No...no, that's it. That's it, I'm done. No one ever said anything about murder."

"This is justice."

"THIS IS MURDER!" he shouted.

"Keep your voice down!"

"No!"

"That is an order—"

"_Hang_ your orders! You told me when you recruited me that we were only bringing him in to justice, to have a fair trial, and nowhere in there was anyone supposed to get hurt. This is vengeance, not justice."

"There is no difference."

"There _is_ a godsdamned difference!" Liu started marching for the door.

"Where are you going?" Zang demanded.

Liu reached for the doorknob. "To report you to the authorities."

"Don't you dare turn your back on me, Liu Yong."

Liu turned around long enough to give him another glare. "Go to Hell, Deshi." Then he made the worst mistake of his life. He turned his back. He started to turn the knob. Then his body slumped against the door, after Zang had unsheathed a knife and thrown it directly at Liu's unprotected back. Liu barely had a chance to cry out in shock from the sudden pain, but the death was quick. Zang's aim was true, and Liu had been pierced right through the heart. No one else in the room moved until the chestnut horse's body slumped to the floor and lay still, blood still pouring from the wound.

Zang pulled the knife from the corporal's back and turned to Quon. The tiger youth was dangerouly pale, and looked near ready to be violently ill. But Zang had to make his point and get it across quickly. He grabbed the youth by the throat and held him tightly.

"I will only say this once," Zang hissed. "You are to follow my orders, no questions asked. You dare to question me, and you will join him. You will follow my orders, you have no choice. Now, you are in this up to your neck. If I go, you go down with me."

He released Quon's throat, and the tiger stepped back a few paces and sank into a chair. He couldn't take his eyes off Liu's body. Zang snorted and started wiping blood off the blade. "Go raise the alarm and tell the palace staff that the Wu Sisters assassinated him. We will give him an honorable burial, so no one suspects a thing. No one will ever know. _Right_?"

Finally fighting down the nausea twisting in his gut, the tiger nodded. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Shifu was interrupted from Dalang's training by Mantis, who demanded to see him in no uncertain terms. The red panda listened to the insect's excited, rushed and whispered tones, looking more and more scandalized by the minute.

Sonam and Dalang knew something was wrong, so they ceased training long enough for the red panda to beckon them over and whisper, "Corporal Liu is dead."

"_What_?"

"How?" asked Sonam with suspicion.

"Zang," Mantis said, shocking them all. "He's cracked. Liu found out he ordered the hit on Mei, and he threatened to reveal him. Zang killed him to keep him quiet, and he's threatened the cadet to keep him quiet too. I saw the whole thing from my own little hole in the wall. I heard shouting, looked in, and sure enough, Liu was dead from Zang's knife."

Shifu made the decision for them all: "We are calling an emergency meeting at the restaurant. The rest of the Five need to know."

"What're we going to do about the horse?" Sonam asked.

"We will treat it as Zang explains it, likely that he was killed by the Wu Sisters. We will act like we believe him. The longer we wait, the more rope he has to hang himself with."

"Dunno," Mantis said, "He's got a pretty long rope already."

Sonam tapped on Shifu's shoulder. "One word, mate, all I'm asking...Give the word, and he's no longer a problem..."

Shifu knew what he was asking, and he flatly refused. He had come to like Sonam, and was not comfortable having blood on his friend's hands...or knowing that he was the one who ordered it. "We will discuss this down in the village. Our training is over for today. Mantis, get the rest of the Five together, tell them to meet us for dinner. They'll understand."

* * *

"Aren't you supposed to be on bedrest?"

"Yes, but I want to be here for this."

Crane sighed and shook his head. Mei Xing was being her usual hard-headed self, sitting in her chair with her feet propped up...once again knitting baby clothes.

"And how many blankets does one kid need?" the avian asked.

"Clearly you have no experience with baby spit-up," Tigress said. "Now, we're all here..."

And they were. Crane and Viper had been out running errands when Mantis and Monkey found them, and had come straight away when they heard about the meeting. Dalang was passing around bowls that he had filled with food. Shifu and Sonam were also in attendance, the older snow leopard promising to fill in Auntie Wu, who was still training students at the Lotus School.

When Mantis relayed what had happened to Corporal Liu, they were all shocked.

"_Why_ haven't we arrested him yet?" Monkey asked. "He murdered one man, attempted to murder another..."

"I agree with Monkey," Viper said. "Master, Zang is too dangerous to still be loose."

"I know what you all are thinking," Shifu said, "And he will be brought in to justice. The reason I have not confronted him yet is that he's still too unstable."

"Isn't that the _best_ reason to bring him in?" Crane asked. "He's unstable, he's taken the cadet hostage – I'm calling it for what it is – and he's on a homicidal mission. He needs to be stopped."

"And he will," Tigress said. "If there was a way to contact the Wu Sisters, tell them to move in..."

"He'll expect that, won't he?" Monkey asked.

Tigress shook her head. "I don't know, I don't think he fully believes that Gao was killed by them."

"He seemed to use them as an excuse pretty quickly," Mantis said.

"Let's take stock of the situation, the big picture," Monkey said, ticking off the points on his fingers. "We have one psychopath in the Jade Palace, we have another on the other side of the Devil's Mouth, Tai Lung and Po are still missing in action, and we have only the beginnings of a plan."

"I'm working out the details," Tigress said, "But I can't do this alone. Let's focus on Koshchei first, he's priority number one."

"Koshchei's not going to expect a huge army waiting," Dalang warned. "He's expecting _some_ sort of opposition, though. So we're going to surprise him."

"Dalang," Crane said evenly, "You're my friend, and I'm your friend, and _as_ your friend, believe me when I say that we _can't _fight them. I've seen how the villagers fight. There's no way they're ready. There's no way _we_ are ready!"

"You guys are the _Furious Five_," the chef pointed out. "And don't forget, we've been training the villagers in basic combat."

"I _know_ that," the avian said firmly. "But I also know this, from my cousin who patrols the Devil's Mouth: in the past two months, Koshchei's brought together a band of the nastiest outlaws and rogues we've ever faced. Sure, maybe their numbers aren't as bad as your dad's army was, but we're not just talking Jiao here. These are the worst of the worst, and they number in the thousands!"

Tigress cursed under her breath. As Crane went down the list of rogues, outlaws and thugs that had joined ranks with the Siberian Demon, the tiger master felt her trepidation rising. Even against some of the toughest armies in China, the Furious Five alone could have handled everything before now. The Jiao Clan had been a challenge, comparatively. But this…this sounded like all of their enemies, the people they had defeated at one point or another, and they were all convening together under a single banner to take out their most reviled opponents. Sure, their numbers were not so intimidating, but the level of hatred they probably held for the Heroes of China was nothing to sneeze at. This would be a harder battle than fighting the Jiao…and she knew it.

"Forces like that, we can't fight head-on," she said. "And we don't know who else will be joining them." She paused to think for another minute, then while her friends were debating a plan of action, the answer suddenly occurred to her. And the idea came from a very unexpected source:

"Alright, I've got a plan...Evacuate."

"What? Then what's the point of the training?" Monkey asked.

"I don't mean from the valley," Tigress said, "just the villages. Put the citizens in various points around the valley, in hiding, and wait for the enemy to enter the villages. The best fighters will stay behind to pick them off. Once the enemy is concentrated in the village, we surround them, then attack."

Crane shook his head. "It's risky."

"It can work," Mantis said. "It's definitely a risk, but it can work. Where'd you come up with the idea?"

Tigress pointed downstairs, indicating the family altar. "My father-in-law, Shen. Remember a few years back, the battle of the capital of the Wei kingdom? That's what ended up happening. He tricked the opposing army into holing themselves up in the city, and his troops surrounded them and took them out. Now, I know, not the best example to work from...but this can work. We're going to overwhelm them."

"We don't have surperior forces," Crane reminded her.

"I can help," Su Lin said suddenly.

Tigress felt for her, she truly did, and she didn't mean to patronize the panda, but she said, "That's very kind of you, Su Lin, but healing the enemy wouldn't help us much."

The panda frowned. "I didn't say I would be a healer."

"Then what role would you play?"

Su Lin chirped: "Demolitions expert!"

Tigress blinked. "What? Since _when_?"

Su Lin huffed and pointed at herself. "Okay, hello? Certified apothecary? _Duh_. We don't just dabble in herbs you know."

"You can make rockets?" Shifu asked, suddenly awed.

"Well, not exactly," Su Lin said, suddenly sheepish. "I still hold by my oath to harm none. They're not so much rockets as flash bombs. They'll make a big bang and a bright light to temporarily blind and deafen the enemy, giving you time to get away. They're not strong enough to kill anything."

"But that still comes as an advantage. I'm guessing not a lot of gunpowder goes into these?" the red panda asked.

"Hardly any at all," she said. "Which means that, with the low supply we have already, we can spread it out better."

"That _would_ be a great advantage," Monkey said.

"I don't know," Tigress said. "Any kind of explosive in close-quarters urban fighting doesn't sit well with me."

"But we can use it outside the village limits," Viper suggested. "Set up some little traps, only use them in well-ventilated spaces..."

"But these were designed to be used in close quarters," Su Lin objected. "For many of the weaker, smaller villagers, it could mean the difference of living to fight again, or getting killed in battle."

"I'm sorry," Tigress said, "But I'm not comfortable with it. The flash bombs are a good idea, but I don't want to run the risk of anyone getting seriously hurt."

"Except the bad guys."

"Except the bad guys," Tigress agreed with a nod.

"I'm sorry, Tigress, but I have to disagree," Viper said. "I like the idea. And Su Lin makes a good point: for those villagers that are too small or old or weak to fight, these flash bombs can give them a chance to run."

"They don't even make a big explosion," Su Lin said. "They're like firecrackers, honestly."

"Maybe so, but I'm not setting off firecrackers in my house," the tiger master said stubbornly.

Dalang cleared his throat. "Um, sorry hon, but I think its a good idea too."

Tigress hesitated, looked around the circle at her friends and family, then sighed. "Am I the only one that thinks this is a bad idea...or am I overruled?"

Sonam spoke for the group: "Overruled, love."

"Wonderful." She sighed, then turned to Su Lin. "Okay, start making them. Make as many as you have materials for. But...just be careful."

The female panda offered her a sunny smile, "Aren't I always?"

* * *

It took very little to make Lang nervous, but Koshchei, lately, was doing just that. After Bao Nu's death – or "disappearance" as the rest of the horde knew it – Koshchei had gotten more and more withdrawn, less jovial than he had before. Instead he spent most of his time staring into the flames in the fireplace at the inn, ignoring the innkeeper and others who came by to see if he was comfortable. The leopard's tail twitched like it had a mind of its own, while the rest of his body was perfectly still. Sometimes he didn't move for hours, which made Lang wonder a few times if the old cat had died. Unfortunately for one poor crocodile, that proved not to be the case; the croc worked on unreliable intelligence that the cat was dead and therefore free for looting.

That croc didn't leave the room alive.

Word of that quickly got around, and Lang noticed that most of the horde regarded him very suspiciously, and stayed away from Koshchei's room. He heard whisperings that perhaps Koshchei was responsible for Bao Nu's disappearance. Which, actually, wasn't far from the truth. Had Koshchei never suggested it, Lang would have never dared do it.

But now even Lan Duo was getting nervous. He spent less and less time with Lang and Koshchei, even though he was in the old leopard's good graces. He knew enough to keep his distance, and took the opportunity to keep Lang away as much as possible.

The bandit focused on Lang's training. The youth had come along nicely, and was by now skilled with spears and lances, to a level that Duo was comfortable with. The kid could finally hold his own, and as his teacher, Duo was rather proud of that. One day after training, not too long before the Dong Zhi festival, he returned to the room he now shared with Yu Wang and Xu Jiu, to find them conversing in low tones, cutting themselves off as he entered.

Sweaty despite the cold late autumn air, Duo breathlessly asked, "What? I do something?"

"Nothing," Xu Jiu said quickly.

"I'll take a bath, I swear."

"It's not that. Though we'd like it if you did."

Duo held off on sniffing himself to see if there really was a need and shrugged. "No need to keep secrets from me, guys. I'm still one of you."

Yu Wang looked dubious. He cleared his throat, "Koshchei gave the order to move out while you were training the kid."

Duo blinked. "So soon? I thought he wanted to wait."

"We did too," Xu Jiu said. "He wanted to leave ahead of schedule. Guess he thinks we'll have a hard time crossing the bridge."

"Sure, it's not an easy one to cross. And the weather getting worse by the day..."

"Do you trust him?"

"Who, Koshchei?" Duo asked, then scoffed, "Hell _no_ I don't trust him, and if he's smart, he won't trust me either."

"Well duh, obviously. But don't you think...I mean, isn't it weird that suddenly random members of this horde are going missing? And just a couple days ago, he killed that croc?"

"To be fair," Xu Jiu pointed out, "That croc _was_ kinda askin' for it."

"I don't like it," Yu Wang said. "I was on board with this in the beginning but now I'm having second thoughts. Where does this go, how _far_ does this go?"

Duo considered what he said. He'd been wondering that too. He wagered that, at seventy-eight years of age, Koshchei didn't have much time left, and if he did, how likely was he to be in the shape he was now? He remembered the vow they'd made earlier that autumn: one day, the old leopard would get weak, get careless, and then he could be taken out. When that day happened...

He'd considered alternative plans. He figured that with the treasures the Valley of Peace likely had, he could retire somewhere, maybe bring Lang with him, maybe adopt the kid as a younger brother or something, and they could live like kings for the rest of their days. That seemed like a pleasant prospect. Duo was getting rather tired of the bandit lifestyle, and would be happy to leave it all behind. The only thing standing in his way was Asmodei Koshchei.

"Wherever it goes," Duo said, "It can't last much longer. How soon are we leaving?"

Yu Wang said, "First group left a half hour ago. We're going along next."

"Alright. I'll go get Lang and meet you guys at the Thread of Hope." Duo grabbed his bag and walked out, leaving behind two very anxious wolves, who were not at all convinced Duo saw the danger they both did.

* * *

Duo found Lang standing at the shore of the lake, looking out across the water to the surrounding mountains. The youth made a more impressive figure now; his posture was improved, and there were definite muscles on his otherwise skinny arms. Most of the time, lately, Lang had even started to look more confident. Today, though, the youth looked much the same as he had when Duo had first met him: like a scared, kicked puppy.

"Hey, ready to go?"

Lang jumped. He hadn't heard his teacher's approach, but recovered with a nervous laugh, "Jeez, man, don't do that. Damn near gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry. What's got you so jumpy?"

"Nothing."

"Lang."

"Okay, it's..." Lang looked around, out of habit, as most of the horde had gone on ahead. The shores of the lake were deserted, but even so, Lang lowered his voice: "Koshchei."

"What about him?" Duo asked in a whisper as well, but he didn't know why.

"He's seemed...different, lately. Like, he used to laugh and joke all the time, now he's really serious."

"Well, yeah, he is. He's an assassin, they get serious from time to time."

"Its not that. I've...I've been getting second thoughts, lately. I didn't think of him as, well, dangerous before..."

"Before the croc?"

"Something like that."

"Lang, didn't you think that with a name like the Siberian Demon, that he might be a _tad_ unhinged?"

Lang finally looked him in the eye and told him, "I think I'm in over my head."

Duo paused, then started walking along the shore. "Lang, you've always been in over your head."

"Not like this!"

"Yes, like this. If you left White Wolf, he would have killed you. If you leave Koshchei, he'll kill you. Is that what you're worried about? C'mon, he likes you. Why would he kill you?"

Lang didn't answer him. He was too deep in thought. After killing Bao Nu on Koshchei's orders (fine, suggestion), Lang had begun to have second thoughts. He wasn't meant to be a killer. Taking a life had been very unsettling, despite what he told the old leopard. Tan Lan had deserved it, Bao Nu...well, he could argue the world was better off without him. But the more Lang thought about it, the less he was sure he wanted to be feared like the leopard was. The more he thought about it, the more he saw that he had, quite literally, made a deal with the devil and there was no way out.

Lang stopped walking to look back at Duo, who had also stopped walking. The taller wolf's eyes were trained on something that had washed ashore; he walked over to the lumpy white-shrouded object and tore open the white cloth to see what was inside. He, being a bandit, likely thought it was some valuables the owners of the inn had thrown into the lake to keep from the outlaws.

Lang recognized it immediately.

"Duo, _don't_!"

Duo stood and backed away from the shroud he had just opened to reveal its contents, a hand poised over his gaping mouth. He looked like he was trying to hold in a horrified scream.

He had just discovered Bao Nu's headless corpse.

Lang cursed, realizing he hadn't gotten rid of the body as best he could. He should have used more weights...

Then Lang froze. Something about Duo's lack of response made him look back. Duo hadn't screamed, hadn't vomitted in disgust, hadn't even moved. And what Lang saw when he looked back almost made him sick.

The look on the outlaw's face was...horror. Sheer, total horror. To think of all the things the bandit had been through, the torture and abuse he suffered, and the dozens of lives he had taken by his own hand...to see the horror in Lan Duo's suddenly very pale face looking right back at him felt like a slap to his face. But it was when Duo looked at his charge that he – in total disbelief – put the pieces together.

"Lang...what have you done?" he asked in a disembodied way, as if he refused to believe that Lang—little Lang—was capable of something so monstrous.

Lang just stared back at him. How had he figured it out? Was he that transparent that Duo could tell this was his work?

"What have you _done_?" he repeated, pleadingly, hoping that Lang would tell him he was wrong, tell him that he was _not_ capable of this, that he was _not_ a monster.

Lang looked back down at the corpse, that was now bloated, which likely was why it floated back up to the surface. He hadn't known that about dead bodies. Why didn't Asmodei tell him this?

"You did this, didn't you?"

Without hesitation, Lang nodded.

"Why?"

"We needed the money" was what he wanted to say, but instead he said:

"Because Asmodei told me to." Then he stopped himself. He looked right into Duo's eyes, and realized for the first time _how come I never noticed his eyes were that shade of brown, like deep amber?_ But he also realized...

"Oh, my gods," Lang said, holding a hand up to his mouth. It did very little to stop the vomit that suddenly poured from his mouth. He hunched over and vomited more, coughing and hacking until he collapsed in the dirt, completely drained.

Duo didn't even move to assist him.

Lang chanced a look up at his mentor.

Duo's expression had hardened, and he wouldn't even look him in the eye.

"Duo...I'm sorry."

Then the other wolf snapped, turning on him. "Sorry? You're SORRY? You killed a man in cold blood, for no fucking reason...you strung us all along, making us think you were still sweet, innocent little Lang, and this whole time you've been a total fucking psychopath...you betrayed us, and all you can say is you're _sorry_?"

"I didn't mean to!"

"Its pretty fucking obvious you _meant_ to!" he shouted, pointing at the bloated corpse. "Who do you think you are? You think that Hao's abuse is reason enough to do this? This...this is sick. No, _fuck_ this," he said, suddenly pacing. "No...I wanted revenge, but not if _this_ is the cost."

"You wanted him dead! I'm going to do that!"

"When did I ever say I wanted him dead?" he shouted.

"How _else_ do you get revenge?" Lang challenged.

"By completely destroying him, that's how! You don't have to kill someone to destroy them!"

"Yes you do!"

"How do you fucking know?"

"Because that's what Asmodei says!"

And there it was. Something shifted behind Duo's expression, and Lang knew immediately what had happened. "Oh gods...Duo, wait—"

"That son of a _bitch_," he seethed, drawing a knife. "That son of a bitch. I'll fucking kill him."

Lang made a move to stop him. "Duo, no, he'll kill you too!"

Duo turned around and punched Lang so hard he sent the youth sprawling back, tripping over the shroud and into the water with a loud splash. Lang held a hand to his face, looking back at Duo with a shocked, betrayed look. But Duo wasn't about to give him anymore mercy.

"Don't you _dare_ look at me that way," he growled. "I have been through a hell of a lot more shit than you ever will, and I never turned into..._this_!" He pointed at the body again. "If the only difference between me and you is that damn cat...then he's out of the picture."

"He'll kill you!"

That was when Duo said something that would haunt him the rest of his life: "I'd rather be dead than know I helped create you!"

Lang sucked in a breath and felt something so agonizingly familiar: his heart breaking. Despite the fact he wanted to show how hard he had become, despite wanting to show no vulnerability whatsoever...he couldn't stop the tears from rolling down his cheeks. By now, Duo had turned his back on him and was marching to the Thread of Hope to confront the man responsible for bringing out his dark side.

* * *

Asmodei was waiting outside the guard post, wiping blood off his claws with a spare shirt owned by one of the bulls. The leopard was once again disappointed; taking them down had been too easy. Really, what were soldiers made of these days? It was a wonder China had not been invaded ten times over.

He knew what was coming. He could hear the heavy breathing long before he could smell the wolf, and sense the blind rage coming off him. He knew the scent; each of his prey smelled the same, in one way or another. The leopard didn't bother to look up.

"Body float, _da_?"

Duo froze after he rounded the guard post, the white-knuckled grip on his knife shaking. He took in the two dead bulls, the blood-soaked floor, and Asmodei's bloodied claws. Another senseless death...but no more. No more deaths, if Duo had any say. But right now, he wanted some answers. "You knew?"

"Who you think give order, volf?"

They had attracted an audience, but Duo didn't notice. Asmodei was happy to know that so many under his command were there to see this. He wanted every last one of them to know how he dealt with disappointment. Lan Duo was a very effective teacher, but, much like Jiao Dalang, he was weak. Shame, too, he had such potential.

"Why not do it yourself? Why drag him into this?"

"Vhy you care?"

Duo seethed, "I care because I do. Damn it all, I started to love the kid like a little brother. He had so much potential and you _ruined_ him."

"_I_ ruin?" Koshchei asked, "or he ruin hisself?"

"Fuck you, cat!" the wolf snapped. "He would've never turned out this way except through you!"

"He suffer abuse."

"So did I, but you don't see me doing what he is! What's your real angle?"

Koshchei chuckled. "Vhy you think I tell you?"

"I'll _make_ you tell me."

Koshchei turned slightly and raised a brow at the enraged wolf and his knife. Then the leopard chuckled again. "You think I am...how you say...afraid?"

"You should be."

"Ha! Vhat threat are you? Leettle boy afraid of the dark...is leettle cub brave enough to face most vorst darkness in history?" he mocked.

Duo hesitated, only slightly, but Koshchei noted it. "I'm not afraid of you."

"You are."

"I will kill you, right now, and all your plans are finished."

Asmodei put the pipe down on a nearby rock, and turned to fully face the wolf. Raising his arms, palms up, he beckoned the wolf to strike. "Vhat you vait for?"

Duo growled and charged, slashing the knife at Asmodei's middle. To his shock, what should have been a clean hit turned into the leopard grabbing him by his tunic and throwing him over his shoulder. Asmodei slammed the wolf into the rocky ground, knocking the wind out of him. Pain shot up Duo's spine, and it hurt to breathe. How the hell had the old bastard done _that_?

He opened his eyes just in time to roll away when Asmodei's claw came down to slam down into the dirt where Duo's head had just been. He got back up onto his feet and dodged another two punches the leopard threw at him. Duo, like other outlaws, had heard of Asmodei's prowess in battle, but he figured a seventy-eight year old geezer had to be easy pickings. The wolf was quickly learning that he was dead wrong.

Koshchei nailed a hard punch on Duo's jaw, sending the wolf stumbling backwards. Duo's heart skipped when his heel fell back into nothingness. Somehow, during the short fight, Koshchei had backed him up against the Devil's Mouth...and Duo was teetering dangerously above the dense fogs in the deep trench.

He quickly dived down into the dirt, dodging another charge. Rising to his knees, he was greeted by three more hard punches to the face. He was down, his knife falling from his hand. Koshchei struck again, slamming his palm down on top of Duo's neck, pinning the wolf to the ground. Duo clawed at his arm, struggling to breathe while his other hand tried to reach for the knife. Koshchei's face contorted into a grimace as he tightened his grip on the wolf's throat.

"No, STOP!"

Koshchei looked up to see Lang pushing through the ring of outlaws that had gathered to watch the fight. Xu Jiu stopped Lang before the youth could get any closer. "Asmodei, DON'T!"

Duo took the chance Lang had given him, feeling the leopard's grip slacken enough for him to grab his knife and stab it right into the leopard's already injured shoulder. Koshchei let out a profound roar that echoed off the peaks and through the canyon, something that chilled the blood of all who were witnessing this fight. Duo brought his legs up to his chest and kicked hard into the leopard's stomach. Koshchei fell back a few yards, dangerously close to the cliff.

Duo got back up to his feet, blood trickling down his neck where Koshchei's claws had pierced his skin. His side hurt, his back hurt, his face hurt, but he wasn't done, not by a long shot. He stood his ground, this time waiting for Koshchei to get back up. It took the leopard a moment or two, and when he finally stood again, panting, he fixed his blue-green eyes on the bandit and hissed in Russian.

Duo snorted, "Let's try speaking Mandarin, okay bud?"

"DUO GET DOWN!" Lang screamed.

Duo hit the dirt as Koshchei pounced at him, the leopard flying up over the wolf who had ducked just in time. Instead of turning back to attack the wolf, Koschei instead lashed out at Lang. Duo gasped and felt his heart sick into his stomach. Koshchei was pissed at the kid...and Duo had riled him up enough for him to kill him!

Snarling, Duo ignored his pain and threw himself at Koshchei's unprotected back, digging the knife into him. Koshchei turned his rage back against the bandit, having first grabbed Lang by the neck. His attention diverted, he let go of Lang before the youth suffocated. But Lang could only watch in horror as Duo attacked the leopard again and again, only to be parried each time, take numerous hits, and then choke as Koshchei grabbed him by the neck again. Lang watched in horror as Koshchei raised Duo off the ground and stalked to the cliff.

"No..." he rasped, trying to scream but his throat hurt too much. "No!"

Duo knew what was coming, and he desperately tried to claw at Koshchei's arm, the knife in his hand useless against the mad leopard's thick skin. Koshchei was so enraged, he ignored all the pain, all the blood that soaked his sleeve, all the injuries. In a strength only brought on by madness, he walked straight to the edge of the cliff, seething, but smiling to see the terror in Duo's eyes.

"_Dasvidanya_," said the leopard.

He let go.

Lang shrieked Duo's name as the wolf disappeared downward into the mists. Xu Jiu and Yu Wang held Lang back as he collapsed into the dirt, hanging his head and sucking in breaths. Somewhere between sobbing and dry-heaving, he didn't realize that Koshchei was there until the leopard stood right in front of him.

"_You were a fool to trust him,"_ he said in Russian. _"You only have yourself to blame."_

"That's not true," Lang said, tears starting to pour down his cheeks. "That's not _true_..."

"_His death is your fault. Don't forget that. You are __**my**__ student now; if it is love you want, you follow me. If you are content with mediocrity, you can join your precious pack member."_

Lang stared at the cliff, the mists rising from the canyon. He hadn't heard Duo scream. He would have screamed. He wanted to scream. He still wanted to scream. But right now, more than anything, he truly did want to join him... Koschei was right. If it hadn't been for him, Duo would still be alive. It was his fault. It was all his fault, everything! Why did he ever think anything would ever be different? Everything had always been his fault, why should it be different now?

If it hadn't been for him, if he had never killed Bao Nu so he could achieve his mentor's affection, maybe he could have joined Duo...they could have run away, been bandits together, been a pack...

He had been an omega before, but Lang had never felt so alone as he did kneeling in the dirt before the Thread of Hope, staring out into the nothingness below.

Koshchei growled and grabbed the youth by the back of his head, yanking him up sharply. _"Don't even think about it. We both know you don't have the nerve. I'm not done with you yet. You are mine until the day I decide you die, got it? You will not outlive me..."_

Lang managed a quick nod before Koshchei let him go. The youth collapsed back into the dirt and hunched over, desperately trying to hold back the sobs. Koschei barked an order to the standing army and one by one, they started to cross the bridge.

Lang felt two pairs of hands hold him up and help him stand. Xu Jiu and Yu Wang waited until Koshchei had stalked back to the guard post for provisions and slammed the door behind him.

"Fuck this," the normally taciturn Xu Jiu said. "I'm not stickin' around for him to bump me off too."

"Ditto," Yu Wang said. "We're crossing, now." He held Lang up and shook him by the shoulders. "Listen kid, I know this'll be hard, but you gotta listen to me."

"Why should he listen to _you_?" Xu Jiu asked incredulously.

"Will you _shut up_? Lang," he said, "What'll it be? We can turn around now, find someplace to hide..."

Lang started catatonically shaking his head, muttering in a disembodied way. "No...no, he'll find me...he's come this far for Jiao Dalang...he won't rest until I'm dead. He's going to kill me. I should fall...let me fall..."

Yu Wang snorted and knocked Lang so hard in the head that the youth fell into Xu Jiu's waiting arms. "That'll work for a couple hours, we need to get moving."

"Where?" the large wolf asked. "You heard the kid, if we run, he'll come after us. Even with this invasion, would you put it past him?"

Wang thought about it, then cursed. "Damn, you're right. He killed Duo like it was nothing...we can hide in the valley. Turn ourselves into the authorities."

"Are you crazy? Do you have any idea what they'll do to us?"

"Do you have any idea what _Koshchei_ will do to us?"

Xu Jiu took a moment to think this over, then gave the assassin a pale-faced look. Then he slung Lang's unconscious body over his broad shoulder "...Yeah, let's go turn ourselves in."

Wang nodded quickly and cut in line to get onto the bridge. Xu Jiu followed right behind him, and the whole first half of the journey across, Lang lay like a limp doll over the large wolf's shoulder. In the blackness, it was the only way he had any kind of peace.

* * *

After leaving Chengdu, the travelers rented a boat to take them the rest of the way to the Thread of Hope. Altai's knowledge of the landscape was exceedingly helpful, and meant that Po and Tai Lung would get to the Valley of Peace much faster than if they had gone over land. This made the snow leopard very happy, and in fact was in excellent spirits for the first two days. They made excellent time, sticking to the rivers and the few canals they came across. Altai proved himself to be as able a sailor as he was a soldier, steering the boat through more treacherous rapids and rock-filled fords into deeper water. The boat itself was a little leaky in places, but still sea-worthy.

Like Altai, Little Brother spent most of his time up on deck. However, the little red panda cub spent most of it seasick. He was a creature of forests and mountains, and the churning waters and rocking vessel did little to settle his stomach. Altai took great care of him, feeding him plain rice and vegetables, and plenty of herbal teas to keep him hydrated. Before long, though, the rhino grew very worried, and so did Po and Tai Lung.

"There's a village up ahead, about another mile," Po said. "I've been there before. We can stop for a day or two, until he gets better. We can also get medicine and food there."

The others thought it a fine idea. Altai deviated from the main river down a narrower and shallow tributary. Their boat scraped against a sandbar more than once, but no real damage was done. It would be more than a few hours until they arrived in the village Po spoke of.

While the panda decided Little Brother could use a lie-down, and thus took him into the little hut on the main deck, Altai and Tai Lung stayed above deck, the former to steer, and the other to keep watch. The latter need not have bothered; the way was peaceful, and he felt relaxed for the first time in weeks. Altai commented on this, to which Tai Lung replied,

"We just need to get back to the valley, I can plan from there," Tai Lung said. He rested his cheek on his palm and sighed. "The worst is that not only do I have this Koshchei fellow to worry about, but now this Zang Deshi character..."

"What's that about Zang Deshi?" Altai asked, looking very interested.

The snow leopard turned to the rhino. "Did you know him?"

"Knew _of_ him, never met him in person. Vachir knew him, they were in the same graduating class at the military academy, but as I understand, they were never really close. Why are you worried about it?"

"Evidently he's trying to bring me to justice for murdering the Anvil of Heaven."

Altai set his jaw. He looked dark and stern. "That's on some pretty shaky legal ground. On the one hand, I can see why he thinks it is murder, but we're not talking about civilians. The Anvil of Heaven was nothing more than highly-trained killing machines capable of taking on the entire Mongol army alone."

"_Nothing more _than highly-trained killing machines, he says?" Tai Lung sarcastically retorted.

"It can also be argued that they all died in combat, which isn't exactly referred to as 'murder' in our legal system..."

"But my actions resulted – many times directly – in their deaths."

"Understand that each and every last one of them took the job of guarding you knowing full well there was a chance they could be killed should you ever escape. Sure, the chance of that wasn't as likely as the chances of being killed in a battle, and many I knew got complacent after a while, but almost all of them still knew there was a chance. The interesting thing is...if the Empire were really concerned with bringing you to justice, the Emperor would have carted you off and executed you long before now."

Tai Lung couldn't help but swallow hard and rub his neck self-consciously. But he noted Altai's grave expression, leading him to ask about it.

Altai sighed, "Not really my business, and I gave my word...but maybe Vachir can forgive me this one infraction, wherever he is. The truth is, Vachir hated Zang. He said Zang was 'the sorriest excuse for an officer I've ever seen'. Zang was thrilled by the idea of having power, and lusted for it. While he enjoyed doling out discipline to his troops, in reality, he had very little self-discipline."

Tai Lung seemed to know what he meant: "He's a gambler."

The rhino nodded. "I don't know the whole story, only what Vachir ever told me, but apparently Zang was up to his ears in debt when he graduated. Unlike other officers who graduated, went on to get married, raise families, live in expensive houses, Zang was on the brink of poverty and ruin for years because he was always gambling. This was a man who knew odds and ratios, and that often came to his advantage in battle, and won him awards and patches on his uniform. But don't you think it odd that he was in the service as long as Vachir, and Vachir made it all the way to Commander while Zang stayed a low-ranking captain?"

"His superiors couldn't trust him," Tai Lung realized.

"That's my guess. And here's another: he's probably only going after you for whatever cash reward there is on your head. I don't know why there would be any; after you were imprisoned, there was no need for a wanted poster to be made, and after your escape, there wasn't enough time to make one of you before the Dragon Warrior defeated you. And you were presumed dead for a year before you suddenly came back on the scene, and once word got out that you had teamed up with the Dragon Warrior and Furious Five to defeat the Jiao clan, most of the people in the capital city thought that arresting you would be foolish, considering the great good you had done since your reformation.

"Though I'm not telling you to underestimate him, Zang isn't as big a threat as Koshchei is. He might think he is, and he might want you to think he is, but he isn't. You're a far better fighter than he is, and he knows it, so he's going to fight dirty in order to win."

Tai Lung wished that had been encouraging, but knowing this much about a man he knew next to nothing about helped. Altai was a fountain of knowledge, though it did lead to the snow leopard getting rather suspicious...

"You know quite a bit about law and philosophy," he said not too long after.

"So?"

"You're a soldier."

"I'm a man of many interests. I also like poetry and gardening."

Tai Lung stared at him for a moment, then said, "Strangely, that doesn't surprise me."

Altai just smirked.

Before long, they came upon the village Po had mentioned, and when they arrived, Tai Lung was surprised to find the entire village was made up of giant pandas. There was the odd goat or sheep, to be sure, but these were mostly merchants passing through onto their next destination. The inhabitants of this farming village, just a little ways off in a tributary that led to the main river, were all pandas. And Po seemed right at home.

To say the panda had been there before wasn't quite putting it right. The villagers all looked delighted to see him, some even hugged him. And when he introduced his companions, not only were they treated to a feast like kings, but Little Brother got the medicine and care he needed, and then some. Altai never left the child's side the whole night. By the next morning, the red panda cub had made a complete turnaround, thanks to the help of an elderly healer who smiled more than spoke.

They loaded up their little boat with enough provisions to get them to the Valley, and Altai made sure to stock up on medicines, bandages, and anything else they could possibly need. The last one to get on the boat was Po, who had held back for one last goodbye.

Tai Lung watched in surprise as Po leaned forward and hugged the village elder, who patted the Dragon Warrior on the shoulder and whispered something to him. Then the green-robed elder handed Po a bag, and bowed to him. Po bowed lower to the elder, then turned to leave, waving his goodbyes.

"What was that about?" the snow leopard asked when Po got back to the boat.

"Just saying goodbye to my father," Po said as he waved from the deck, the village swiftly going out of view as the current took them away.

Tai Lung froze. Then he stared at Po. Then he stared at the elder panda who still stood on the pier, smiling at them and waving. Then the feline turned and stared back at Po.

Po stared back at him. "What? I say somethin'?"

Tai Lung stuttered, "Did...did you just say that panda was your _father_?"

"Yeah. He's my biological dad."

"Since _when_ have you known your biological father?"

"Since right after I fought Lord Shen."

"Fought _who_?"

"Lord Shen, the peacock? Gongmen City? How can you not remember this?"

"I wasn't there, Po!"

Now it was Po's turn to look confused. "You weren't? You sure?"

"Po, when the devil did you go to Gongmen City?"

"Um...about three years ago? Maybe four? It was right after I became the Dragon Warrior. Lord Shen, who was the banished son of the king in that city, had developed a weapon that could stop kung fu, so me and the Five went there to defeat him, and we did. So kung fu's saved, I found out I was adopted, and everyone lived happily ever after. Where _were_ you for all this?"

"Judging by the timeline, probably _presumed dead_," the feline snapped.

Po paused to think it over, do some quick calculations in his head, then groaned, "Oh _yeah_, that's right! It was right after I defeated Lord Shen - not Jiao Shen, different Shen - then I found out how I became an orphan and got adopted, then I tracked down my biological father, we met, and we've been keeping in touch, though, uh, not so much on my end. Been pretty busy. And that's _right_ - then right after I met _him_, _you_ came back into the picture. Wow, you really missed a lot during that year."

Still feeling sore he had been left out of this, Tai Lung said, tail twitching in annoyance, "Anything else I need to know before we get any further?"

"Hmm...oh yeah! Tigress is okay with hugs."

"Well forget it, I'm not hugging her."

Po shrugged. "Suit yourself. She's actually a lot nicer than she looks. She puts up this hardcore image, you know, because she's afraid of getting hurt. She's a lot like you. Maybe that's why I got along so well with you when our friendship started: thanks to Tigress, I knew why you were so hard. You'd been hurt before...a whole lot. I figured that, just like her, you just needed someone to listen, someone to empathize with, you know?"

Tai Lung knew Altai was giving them a significant look, but thankfully the rhino was busy with Little Brother and untying the boat from the mooring and pushing off to follow the river's current. The snow leopard took in a deep breath, and asked the first of two big questions:

"So what about Mr. Ping?"

"What about him?" Po asked.

"Well...you've found your real father..."

"I never said that panda back was my _real_ father. I just said he was my father."

Tai Lung stared at him. "Alright, I don't follow."

Po sighed and explained: "Look, the panda back there, he's my father. But Mr. Ping...he's my _dad_. He may not be my _father_, but to me, he'll always be Dad. He was the one who raised me, who cared for me, who fed me, clothed me, put a roof over my head...and sure, maybe my father loves me, but Mr. Ping _truly_ loves me. He didn't have to take me in, but he did anyway, and he raised me as his own son, and loves me in spite of all my - let's face it, _many - _faults. That means more to me than I can really say, 'cause you know me, I'm not too good with words. I guess what I'm trying to say is..._any_ guy can be a father, but it takes real guts to be a _dad_. You know what I'm saying? Am I making any sense?"

Slowly, the snow leopard started nodding. "Yes...yes, but how does one know that they'll be a good father? Er, dad?"

Po shrugged. "You don't. But what my dad always said to me, Po, he said, I may not be perfect, but I do the best job I can. So...I guess that means that you shouldn't try to be perfect when it comes to parenting...just try to be good. The rest will follow." The panda smiled at his friend. "You're going to be a great dad, Tai. I know you're afraid of screwing up..."

_You have no idea,_ Tai Lung thought.

_You're going to be fine._

That shocked them both. Tai Lung held his head in his hands, feeling like a migraine had suddenly flared up, pulsing and throbbing from his temples across his forehead and behind his eyes. It blinded him, causing momentary panic, and he began to feel like he would be violently ill. This was a migraine, he told himself, and he knew by instinct that it wouldn't go away until that mental link Sun Bear had talked about was fully established. Po's voice echoed in his head. _You're going to be fine_. Again and again, Po's message got through. The barrier had been broken...hadn't it?

Tai Lung knelt in the bottom of the boat, still holding his head. No, no the barrier wasn't completely broken. It was weakened, but it wasn't broken.

_Tell him,_ his mind screamed at him. _Tell him, TELL HIM._

Tai Lung gritted his teeth against the pain, and looked up into Po's eyes. "Po...there's something I need to tell you."

At once, Altai secured the rudder, took Little Brother's hand and both of them retreated to the boat's cabin, closing the door behind them. This was it. Now or never.

Po seemed to sense how important this was. He gave Tai Lung his full attention as they sat at the bow of the boat, both of them staring out ahead of the water, the river that was swiftly taking them home. Tai Lung remembered another river, one that had taken him partway towards Chorh-Gom. He remembered seeing flashes of sun and moon reflecting off the water through the bars of his cage. Wordlessly, Tai Lung reached out for his friend's hand, and as soon as he touched Po's hand, the panda got the image in his head of the cage, the chains around his wrists, feeling the hate raging inside him, as if he had experienced them all himself.

Tai Lung took in a shaky breath and began, "I have never been completely honest with you about Chorh-Gom..."

"Tai, if you don't want to say anything..."

"Please."

It was the way he said it that caught his attention and made Po close his mouth and listen. Again, the panda was transported to the interior of the prison, again feeling the chains on his wrists, the restraint on his back, heavy, like it was crushing his body. Gravel dug into his knees, and he could barely raise his head. He was bowed there, forced into a repetant pose, but this only hurt his pride further from the humiliation.

"Kneeling there was humiliating," Tai Lung said, feeling the ache in his brain disappearing the more he talked, the more he peeled away the layers of his mind and let Po in. "But that's nothing compared to what happened next..."

Through Tai Lung's memory, Po saw the rhinos coming across the gangplank. Three of them. They weren't armed. And why would they be? But Po didn't like the look of them. He didn't like the way they moved, the way they stared at him. The one in front grabbed a handful of fur at the back of his head and yanked. Po felt the pain shooting across his scalp, even as he knew that Tai Lung had felt all this pain instead. Po realized what was happening. First, that when Tai Lung physically touched him, Po could experience what Tai Lung experienced, through the snow leopard's eyes...which meant that mental link Sun Bear talked about had been at least partially opened. Second...Po was horrified to see what the other rhinos were doing.

"What did they—"

"The worst thing possible," Tai Lung answered. The snow leopard pulled his hand away just as the lead rhino made his first move.

"Po, the thing I never told you, the thing that I've kept secret for so long..." Tai Lung took in a deep, shuddering breath, and exhaled when he spoke. "I was raped in prison."

Po instinctively grabbed his hand, giving it a firm squeeze, which he hoped would offer some form of comfort. He immediately regretted that decision. He was transported back to that day, that first day, that first time...and it felt like his entire body was on fire from the agony. He felt himself screaming even though he knew it wasn't his throat that was screaming itself raw. They were laughing. Those rhinos were _laughing_, like this was some game.

_Aww, I don't think he likes it rough…_one was saying.

Another chimed in, _That'll change; there's a lot he's gonna come to like, or else._

_Think the Commander minds?_ one asked.

_Who d'ya think gave us the clearance? Ya hear that, kitten? No one cares about you - this is how much they care, enough to see you like this. If those people in the Valley could see you now…_

Tai Lung suddenly broke away, running his claws up and down his arms as he shivered violently. Po was right there with him, but he was more horrified by this than by anything he had yet experienced. He was horrified. He was nauseous. He was...he was angry. Blinded, he couldn't see anything else but red, red-hot rage. All the panda saw were those rhinos, their faces, the way they laughed. Then Po realized...that was the root of it. Tai Lung had certainly told him the worst of it, but from that short, torturous trip into the snow leopard's memories, Po learned just how bad it had been.

Chorh-Gom had been very rough on Tai Lung; it wasn't just the verbal, emotional, psychological and physical torture that inevitably preceded it, but the rape—that had been his breaking point. It made sense now. That alone was the reason he had been so ruthless, so violent during his escape. He made sure the first rhinos to go down were the ones who had done the reprehensible deed in the first place; they had taken him, violated him, and laughed when he started to cry.

And Po saw their faces again, when he touched Tai Lung's arm to let him know he was still there. He saw himself through Tai Lung's eyes: the escape, the brutality, sheer animalistic rage, the desire to break free and the instinctive drive to survive. Those faces...those same faces were the first he killed. He had no qualms tossing them off the bridges that criss-crossed the inner sanctum of the fortress-turned-prison. And Po wanted them to suffer. He scared himself with how badly he wanted those guards to pay for what they had done.

Po jerked himself away just in time. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was starting to feel light-headed.

He noticed that Tai Lung was still kneeling there, in the bow of the boat, reliving the nightmare so vividly that he had crossed his arms, leaving deep scratches there, as if he were trying to scrub away the feel of their hands on him.

"Stop," Po said, grabbing his friend's hands. "Stop - TAI LUNG, _STOP_!"

Then Tai Lung was shaken out of his nightmare, panting heavily, and he was back on the boat, sitting next to the only friend he had ever truly trusted. Tai Lung hung his head, and realized that he had scratched himself so deeply he had started to bleed in some places. Not severely, but it was still worrisome. He hadn't scratched himself like this in a long time. The last time it had happened, Mei Xing swore she would declaw him if he ever did it again.

Letting out another shaky breath, he explained, "I'm sorry...I thought I had control over that. There's still this...this urge to just...just get it off, get it off my skin, even years later. It comes out of nowhere, and leaves just as suddenly as it comes. I was, what, twenty-two when it had started, and twenty-seven when I learned to block it out? I can't even remember anymore. It had been about five years of torture before the guards got bored with me, and only a few weeks later, they had begun to fear me..."

Po knew why it had stopped. It was his eyes, had to be. It was the intense and utter loathing, the message behind them: "You'd better pray to every ancestor in your family that I _never_ get loose." Tai Lung probably didn't see those guards again until the day of his escape.

The panda asked, "And Altai? Where did he come in...?"

"He caught them one night, tried to get them courtmarshalled, but that didn't happen," the snow leopard explained. "Eventually they brought more friends, anyone who wanted a piece of...well, you get it." Tai Lung sat back on his rump, drawing his knees to his chest. "Altai cleaned me up, gave me a hot meal, swore he'd get justice for me. He threatened each and every single one of them that if he caught them, or heard of them being down there with me...that he would kill them. Yes, he threatened to kill them for coming anywhere near me. He explained to Vachir that 'it jeopardizes the integrity of the prisoner's constraints if there are too many down there, he could get loose, no matter how good those constraints are'...a sort of too many cooks in the kitchen buggering something up, as he later put it. Vachir bought it for a while. I think he too knew that it was only a matter of time...even if he never admitted it...

"Altai made that pledge to help me, then he left. I waited over ten years, and he never came back. The abuse had largely stopped, but by then, I was just waiting to _get out_. I thought that he would tell the right authorities, that he would tell Oogway what was happening, I always thought it was because I couldn't trust him...now I know he was kicked out of the army for trying to help me. I didn't matter, so his disobeying orders to help me...his situation is my fault."

"No it's not," Po said. "_None_ of this was your fault."

"The rampage..."

"How were you supposed to know that would happen?" Po shouted. "No one in a thousand years would expect _that_!"

Tai Lung looked away from him and stared at the boards that made up the deck. "Some days...I wonder if that was divine retribution for the crimes I committed..."

"NO ONE deserves that!" Po shouted at him. He grabbed Tai Lung by the front of his robes and yanked him up to shake him. The snow leopard was shocked to see the fury in the panda's face. "NEVER let anyone tell you that you deserved that, because it is _not_ true. You are not to blame for it! STOP beating yourself up about it, because you couldn't have prevented it, you couldn't have predicted it, and the only ones who should be ashamed are those guards!"

"Don't you know why I never told you?"

"I can take a guess..."

"I..." Tai Lung sighed. "I thought that telling you would mean you would shun me."

Po's grip on his robe-front slackened with his jaw. "What? Why would you think _that_?"

"Look at what happens to women who are raped: their entire families are shamed, ostracized. Most of those women kill themselves to save themselves from bearing the shame."

"Is that what you thought?"

Tai Lung didn't answer right away.

"Tai Lung," Po said more forcefully, his fist gripping the cloth harder. "Is that what you planned?"

He avoided a direct answer: "Does it matter now? I don't feel that way anymore. But if word of this got out...I would be ruined, my family would be ruined, our good name gone forever. And what would happen to me?"

"We'd stand by you."

Tai Lung looked at his friend and saw the stone-cold sobriety in Po's determined green eyes as the panda's grip slackened again. "We would _all_ stand by you. Me, the Five, Dalang, Mei, Su, your dad, _my_ dad, Shifu, Auntie...we would all stand by you, I know it. We love you. You think we're going to forsake you because of that? And think about it: with that many people who got your back...who would dare say any different?"

Po should have known when he had first seen those golden feline eyes that there was much strength, but also a lot of pain, that the snow leopard tried desperately to hide. In some ways, he had seen it the first time they fought, and then every successive time they met after that, he saw more and more of what lay behind those eyes. More and more the hardness in them dissipated, and more and more, that hardness, that anger began to be replaced with joy, with love, with contentment. When he had first met him, Po had never seen the snow leopard smile. Sure, he smirked, sneered, jeered, and other such sarcastic twitches of the lips...but when Po first saw Tai Lung _smile_...it was perhaps one of the most heartwarming things the panda had yet seen.

"Tai Lung, I'm only going to say this once, because it only needs to be said once: you. Are. Awesome. You're as close to a big brother as I'm ever going to get. If you think that I'm going to think differently about you just because of something like this...then you don't know me as well as I thought you did."

Suddenly, and quite amazingly...it didn't sting as much as it had before. Tai Lung wasn't breaking out into a cold sweat, not trying to run away, not feeling dizzy, or nauseous. He felt...he felt like it was water passing under a bridge, just as surely as the river flowed beneath their feet. The experiences he'd had since his escape, since his reformation, seemed to soothe the hurts and injuries he had suffered.

Instead of feeling the rough hands abusing his body, he now felt Mei Xing's hands, caressing tenderly, running her fingers through the fur on the back of his head while she kissed him, her hand over his heart as they slept curled up together, her hand clutching his whenever she was worried...he was her rock as much as she was his.

Instead of the jeers and insults, it was Dalang's jokes, the pranks he played. Now it was the Nunchuck Cake incident, the bawdy jokes about Tai Lung's prowess, which were thrown right back at the tiger along with a few choice swears while the rest of the family laughed. Now it was Su Lin's sunny smile when she greeted him in the morning. It was Auntie's own brand of tough love, but one that told him that she loved him as dearly as any mother loves a son. It was Sonam's rough-housing with his adult son, the pride in his eye when he looked at him every day.

It was Po's complete and total acceptance of him, the same smile the panda gave him when they met the second time in that dark courtyard...had it really only been three years? It felt like a century ago, while the attacks had felt more recent. But the more Tai Lung thought about it, the less it hurt. What had happened to him in prison no longer seemed so debilitating, so degrading. Though he could never forget it happened, sharing this moment with someone was a huge step in his recovery.

And when Po touched his shoulder again, Tai Lung saw those same events played back through Po's eyes. He saw himself as the panda, shocked to see the snow leopard alive, _overjoyed_ to see him alive! He saw him training Mei and Su, he saw him cooking his first meals and eventually screwing up, but he now saw that no matter what mistakes he made...Po never judged him. When he screwed up in cooking, Po never faulted him for it. When he was impatient, Po was patient for him. When he was scared and knew he needed to keep up a front for the good of others, Po wasn't afraid of showing his fear. Po respected him, Po idolized him, Po...loved him. He loved him as a brother, as family, as close as two friends could possibly get. Through Po's eyes, he relived those moments. He relived the Jiao War, and felt Po's own panic when he watched himself fall on the battlefield. He relived their victory, and Po's elation that it meant a victory not for himself, but for Tai Lung.

Before he could think it, Po stopped him: _You are not selfish. Don't think that. You have given more of yourself than anyone could ask. Just once, please, let someone else hold you up._

_I'm scared, _he thought.

_I know. Remember what Sonam told you once? When you can't walk, you crawl, and when you can't do that..._

Tai Lung finished the thought: _You get someone to carry you._

Po nodded and smiled. "So, just this once...let me carry you."

He couldn't help it. He started to cry. Po hugged him, and Tai Lung hugged him back.

It was alright. He knew, he knew now, and this wasn't his dirty little secret now. He had someone to confide in, and knowing that took a huge weight off.

Inside the cabin, Altai let out the breath he'd been holding. Little Brother astutely guessed that something had changed. But the rhino only offered the child a playful tousling of the fur on his head, which made the cub giggle and grin. Things were going to be alright, the cub realized. The big rhino didn't look so sad or stern anymore. And it sounded like the big kitty and the panda were happy too. As scary as it had been lately, he knew that things were going to be okay.

* * *

The Chin family was the first to notice something amiss. Fog was rare this time of year, but it descended upon the village overnight. When the rabbits opened their shutters in the morning, Mrs. Chin kept young Fu far from the window as she peeked out. There were rough men outside her home. They crowded the streets, and more and more trickled in over the course of the morning. They looked like they had come far, with ragged clothes and many weapons. These were not merchants. Mrs. Chin closed her shutters and kept the front door locked.

Mr. Ping was the next to notice. The goose wisely kept quiet, but offered his usual hospitality to the brutes and ruffians who came to eat noodles. When Dalang awoke that morning to finish his training at the Jade Palace, Mr. Ping stopped him, and wordlessly pointed out into the courtyard. Dalang moved back into the house and told Tigress to take the back door out of the house, to avoid trouble. Meanwhile, the tiger also steadfastly ordered Su Lin to stay indoors, lest the same men be tempted. Su Lin protested, but Dalang was in no mood to argue.

"I need you to keep Mei Xing calm. I haven't told her they're here."

"They're early," Su Lin said.

"I know. That's what bothers me. Keep out of sight. I'll work in the kitchen today and keep an eye on them. If any of them cause trouble, I'll be around to put an end to it."

"Do you think they will?" she asked.

"I'm kinda hoping the whole 'huge Amur tiger with the nasty glare' thing will keep 'em in line, but you never know."

Fortunately for Dalang, the plan worked. He chopped vegetables and formed dumplings in plain sight, even sharpening his knives in front of the rougher customers. The regulars were used to the tiger's habits, so many didn't bat an eye to see him sharpening every kitchen knife he had until he could literally split a hair on the edge. The newcomers, on the other hand, watched him very warily.

"Whatever you are planning," Mr. Ping whispered to the tiger as they worked side by side, "I hope it works."

Dalang paused, his hands forming the beginnings of their specialty of the day: noodle soup dumplings. "How much do you know?" he whispered back.

"Enough," the goose answered. "You can trust me."

"I know that."

"Then know that I am at your disposal, should you need it."

Dalang bit his lip then glanced down at the goose. Mr. Ping was looking back at him, expectantly. "I didn't want to get you involved. Po would kill me if anything happened to you."

"_Well_, young man," the goose scoffed after glancing over his shoulder at the ruffians in his restaurant. "I'm involved whether I like it or not. I know about this battle that's coming. Don't look so surprised! This is my house too, and you think I don't know whenever you have meetings here? The Chins have also been keeping me up to date."

Dalang noticed that Mr. Chin was there to pick up take-away food for his family. The excuse he gave in front of the ruffians was that his wife was sick, and it was best she not cook and exhast herself. Mr. Ping explained in hushed tones: "That is code for training; Mrs. Chin has been at the Lotus school with the other women. I, on the other hand, have not been training with the other villagers. I don't need to."

"You sure?" Dalang asked dubiously. Then he jumped when the goose pulled out the largest cleaver in the kitchen, then proceeded to chop the radishes and carrots as swiftly, deftly, and with as much force as the tiger would use. When the goose was done chopping vegetables for the large soup cauldron, he flung the knife with a flick of his wing, and the knife was buried deep in the cutting board, still quivering from the force of the throw. Dalang swallowed hard, out of instinct.

Mr. Ping offered him a smile, as if nothing was amiss. "What did I tell you? I don't need to."

Dalang looked between the beaming goose and the cleaver still embedded in the cutting board. "Good to know."

Then the goose turned to look back at the clientele with a sigh. "How long do you think?"

The tiger turned to deliver the soup dumplings on a tray. He looked out at the courtyard, noting how many were warriors, and how many were likely armed to the teeth. "Not long now. Not long at all."

* * *

If there was one thing Mrs. He detested, it was patrols. She had come to an age that she could retire, and had done well for herself: put her only son through the Li Da kung fu academy, now he was Master Crane of the Furious Five...and married to that scaly freak.

Oh well, at least he was a graduate. She could live with that. She supposed that, at her age, she could live with not having grandchildren to honor her once she joined the ancestors. That didn't mean she had to be happy about it.

She had heard of a disturbance by the guard tower; truthfully, she hadn't heard anything for days, and as someone who patroled the Thread of Hope against invasion, not hearing even one status report was cause for concern.

When she got there, the guards weren't there. That was very strange. The place was immaculate. It looked like it had been thoroughly cleaned; the smell of anitseptic and disinfectants was overpowering. It looked like the entire place had been cleaned out, like the guards had been ordered somewhere else and cleaned up the place before they left. The entire place, first and second floor, was spotless. Not a cobweb or dust bunny in sight. Even the cellar, usually stocked with provisions, was empty. There had been enough food down there to last the winter.

Something was very, very wrong. She knew it in her bones. She got out of there and spread her wings to fly to the Valley to warn them of trouble. She only made it a few yards in the air when she chanced to look down into the mists...and spied something on the cliff wall.

This wasn't unusual. Sometimes merchants who came this way dropped things that landed on some outcropping. Usually, the Crane Clan would return the articles. More occasionally...it was a body. Usually a poor soul who had strayed too close to the edge; others were suicide victims.

Mrs. He sighed. She really hoped it wasn't the latter, but, she needed to investigate before she went anywhere. She brought her wings tight against her body and dived fearlessly into the mist, unfurling her wings as she drew close...and she gasped.

It was a body, like she'd guessed. But unlike the countless numbers before him, this body was moving.

"Heavens above!" she gasped as the body turned his beaten face up to her. One arm was up, the hand still wrapped around the knife that he had sunk into the bare rock to slow his descent. There was a long, thin line cut deep into the cliff above, ending at the knife hilt in his hand. He was beaten, bloody and bruised, and looked like he had lost one hell of a fight. But the look in his eyes just broke her heart to see...and as hard-hearted as this job required her to be, that said something.

He was a wolf, a northerner by the look of his clothes. She recognized the knife: Lan clan of wolves, from Haijin. She recognized the face from wanted posters. She also recognized the expressions that crossed his light brown eyes. First he reached out his hand to her, as if to ask for help...then he thought better of it, and she saw that hope die behind his eyes...and he lay down and closed them.

She huffed. "Not on _my_ watch, young man!" She flapped her wings to get reinforcements; ten minutes later, she and two other members of her clan picked up Lan Duo and carried him to the empty guard tower for treatment.

So wrapped up in making sure her guest didn't die in the night, Mrs. He completely forgot to fly to the Valley to warn them of trouble.

* * *

And there we are, 37 pages in MS Word for you. Hope this kept you occupied until the next chapter. I can't guarantee how long it will take to get it posted, but I hope to finish this fic by January. Gives me a good timeline.

As always, please read and review. Constructive Feedback is always appreciated (and I need to be told when my work sucks. Keeps me humble).


	19. Chapter 19: The Battle, Part 1

Happy Year of the Dragon!

I know, its been ages since my last update, and I apologize for that. I'm trying to finish up this story as quickly as possible, but it hasn't been easy. It's just damn hard to write every day like I'm supposed to, what with work and other responsibilities (planning a wedding, primarily). So with all these things going on, please be kind if a lot of this chapter seems disjointed in any way. I've tried my best.

We've come up to the climax now. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, that belongs to Dreamworks. I own all the Original Characters, so please don't use them without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 19: The Battle, Part 1

* * *

Shifu sat in full lotus position in front of the bank of candles in the Sacred Hall of Warriors. He tried to calm his breathing, focus on the flame of a single candle. Focus...focus on just the flame, that tiny little flame among many, quiet the thousand thoughts that ran through his head. Too much had happened in the last week.

First was the incident involving the Wu Sisters and their connection to his wife.

Then came the trickling in of thousands of outlaws. Even if the villagers had not had forewarning, they would have known something was terribly wrong the minute the first hundred rogues descended into the Valley of Peace.

Dalang's training was complete and he was ready, which was a load off the red panda's shoulders, and Sonam had been working overtime in the forge inbetween keeping up with Dalang's sword skills caring for Mei Xing; and Mei Xing had, somewhat remarkably, calmed considerably between her false alarm and the current date. Shifu assumed she was planning for the Dong Zhi festival, in order to keep herself busy and keep her mind off the coming battle and ever more impending labor...which also worried the red panda.

Then there was Zang Deshi. What to do about him? He had servants watching the horse's movements morning, noon, and night, and Shifu knew he needed to act soon before Zang suspected anything.

But he was missing something. He was forgetting something, it was on the tip of his mind, and it bothered him that he couldn't remember it.

He jumped and grabbed his heart when someone tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned, he looked right into Viper's guilty expression.

"Forgive me, Master," she said softly, "I didn't mean to disturb you, but...we have visitors."

Shifu groaned. "Wonderful. Villagers? Merchants?"

Viper pressed her lips together and glanced between Shifu and the front doors. "Actually...the Masters."

"The who?"

"The—"

Then Shifu realized what he had been forgetting. "The _Masters_," he said. "The twenty-nine masters, representing all the kung fu schools...they're here? _Now_?"

"Yes, of course, it is just two days before the solstice. They just walked in the gate."

The red panda groaned again and held his head in his hands. "How could I forget?"

Viper soothed, "You've had a lot on your mind lately, we all have. But there's no need to worry. Remember how much they appreciate the casual dinners we've had each year now? We'll just do that again; they prefer Mr. Ping's cooking anyway..."

"Viper, it's not that easy."

"Master, please," she pleaded. "_Tell_ me. You may be my master, but as far as I'm concerned, given the _circumstances_," she said, heavily emphasizing the word so he caught her meaning, "we are equals."

Shifu stared at her, wondering where she had suddenly gotten so uncharacteristcally forward. Then he wondered aloud...

"Did you happen to get a letter from your mother-in-law?"

Viper immediately stiffened, but forced a smile. "As a matter of fact, yes! She wants to join us this year for Dong Zhi dinner. She expects me to cook. I think it would be wonderful, don't you?"

"No, because the last time she visited, you were in such a mood that you acted more like Tigress than...yourself."

"I'm fine!" she snapped. "There's nothing wrong, nothing. My mother-in-law is a sweet, caring woman who cares very deeply for her only son. I just need to show her that I can take care of him just as well as she can so she can _back off_." She pressed her coils to her lips, and looked guilty again. "Okay, maybe I _have_ been spending a lot more time with Tigress."

"That's not necessarily a bad thing."

"Oh yes, I quite agree—let's see me get into a shouting match this holiday. I can't think of a more festive way to celebrate."

Shifu winced at her sarcasm. "To be fair...that's usually how Dong Zhi festivals went in my family, before I moved out."

She looked surprised. "Really?"

"Really. In some families, it's just not a holiday dinner without someone getting in a fight." Then he straighted up, eyes wide, then he grinned from ear-to-large ear. Viper drew back a bit. "Master?"

"That's it...hot damn, _that's it_!" He jumped up and hugged her. "Thank you, Master Viper, thank you!"

"Oh, well, you're welcome. Um...what did I do?"

"You gave me the most brilliant idea! Why didn't I think of it before? Viper," he said, pointing at her, "Never, ever let your mother-in-law tell you those awful things...you are _brilliant_. Crane is a lucky man. Now, please excuse me, I have a party to throw together."

He ran straight to the front of the Hall, where he welcomed the twenty-nine masters. They each bowed in turn, and Shifu informed that this year would be "informal, as in the previous few years", and that they would be shown to their rooms shortly. He also informed them that this year, the Dragon Warrior was away on a quest, so that meant Shifu was the organizer. "And don't worry, nothing stuffy this year. In fact, I want you all to enjoy the same kind of family Winter Festival that I enjoyed as a child. Because I think we all wish we could feel young again, wouldn't you agree?"

All the masters were highly receptive to this, many seeming grateful that what they expected to be a stuffy, orderly, overly-planned event would instead be similar to festivals of their own childhoods. When the masters were led away by servants to their rooms, Viper slithered up to Shifu, who was still grinning.

"Um, Master? Would you please stop smiling like that? It's getting a little disturbing."

He chuckled. "Viper, remember how I mentioned that festivals with my birth family usually meant someone getting into a fight?"

She stared at him. "You intend the masters to fight each other."

"No, not _each other_."

Then Viper got it, and she too grinned. "Well, then this will be a festival they won't soon forget, won't it?"

* * *

"It's starting soon, isn't it?"

Tigress stopped at the top of the stairs, then glanced over to Mei Xing. The snow leopardess stood in the doorway of the nursery, arms crossed over her chest. She didn't look mad, or scared, which Tigress had to commend her for. Tigress was a nervous wreck.

After a pregnant pause, she sighed and said, "Yes, soon."

Mei Xing looked down at the floor, then out the window at the snow falling outside. "It's really coming down."

Tigress knew what she really meant to say. "His travel won't be impeded. Tai Lung is tougher than that. A little snow won't slow him down."

"You know, that's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that he will get back in time."

"For the birth?"

"For the battle."

Tigress conceded that this was a genuine fear. The feline master wasn't pleased that her own husband would be out among the warriors defending their home. Something she hadn't even thought about but now felt guilty to inquire...

"Could you keep an eye on Shang during the battle? I know Su Lin also said she'd watch him, but if there are many wounded, she may be otherwise occupied..."

Mei Xing smiled at her. "No problem."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. He's very well-behaved. We don't have anything to worry about. Well, at least as far as babysitting goes." The spotted feline paused again, watching her sister-in-law very carefully. "Are you okay?"

Tigress sighed and pressed her index and thumb finger into the palm of her other hand. She tried to steady her breathing, but it wasn't easy. "This is all on me this time. If this fails, it will be my fault. If people die, it will be my fault."

"No, it won't. Everyone is going into this with their eyes wide open, they knew what they signed up for."

"How can you say that?" she asked her. "These are farmers, merchants, people who have never picked up a weapon in their lives..."

"So was my family, and we weren't immune to danger or violence. I've lost aunts, uncles, cousins, to marauders and bandits, as well as soldiers. I know I have every right to be afraid, but I'm not. Not really. I mean, it's horrible, and people will die—because that's how it goes in war—but I have the feeling that everything is going to turn out okay. You'll see."

"I wish I had your faith," the tiger sighed.

"Tigress," Mei Xing warned, "Don't do what you usually do."

"You mean don't beat myself up if I fail?"

"Exactly. You've got bigger things to worry about. Don't focus on what can go wrong, or it will. Change what you can, accept what you can't change."

Tigress wanted to tell her that that encouraged her, but it didn't. The fear of failure absolutely paralyzed her. If anything went wrong, it was all on her. She had planned out the whole thing, mapped battle plans, organized forces, oversaw training...she had, for all intents and purposes, taken on the part of Jade Palace Grand Master, in all but name. Shifu, she thought bitterly, had been useless since his fight with Wu Lien, and he was already occupied with Zang. She would take care of the war horse in her own time. For the interim, she needed to make sure the counter-insurgency went as planned.

She went downstairs, crossed the kitchen, then climbed up the stairs leading up to Po's old room, where Su Lin was putting the finishing touches on her own plans. Tigress ignored the fact that there were explosives in the female panda's room, particularly so close to the fireplace. Su Lin had given up her dresses for a more utilitarian short robe and trousers, and her ribbons were tossed aside as she collected herbs and ripped old sheets into bandages. She looked up when Tigress knocked against the doorjamb.

"Almost ready?" Tigress asked.

"Just about. I have to make one more delivery to the Hong's, and then I think we'll be good."

Tigress nodded. She turned to look out the window at the falling snow. As cold as it had been lately, there was a good chance it would stick, and accumulate quickly. How strange, that something as peaceful as watching snow fall filled her with dread. She made a split-second decision that she hoped she wouldn't regret later.

"Raise the lantern."

Su Lin stopped and stared at her. "Now?"

"Yes, now."

"But it's so early—"

"And I want to take advantage of the weather," the tiger said, nodding at the snow. "They leave the village, the snow covers their tracks. Raise the lantern before you leave. Whatever the enemy thinks, all they'll see are holiday lanterns being hung up a day or two early. Hurry, before it gets too dark out."

Su Lin nodded and quickly packed up. Downstairs, she picked up a basket and filled it with the explosives, then artfully covered them with bean buns. She nodded to Mr. Ping, who stopped chopping vegetables to pick up the lantern Po had made as a child, and light the candle inside it. His patrons immediately knew the signal.

Su Lin moved to the Hong's home, delivered her "basket of holiday cheer", then stopped by the Lotus School to see Aunt Wu. The elderly red panda woman was happy to see her...until she saw the sober look on the taller female's face.

"Raise the lanterns," she said.

"So early?" Wu asked.

"Tigress's idea."

Wu looked down the street which was quickly accumulating snowbanks. She nodded once. "Lanterns indeed. We'll hang them on every eave."

By the time Su Lin got back to the Long and Feng cafe, the customers had all left, but she had noted that everyone was putting up their lanterns as she made her way home. Mr. Ping was cleaning his kitchen, paying very special attention to his knives. Dalang sat with him, running a whetting stone over his prized chef's knife. That night, when the valley was supposed to be asleep in their beds, the Furious Five would lead the villagers out of the village to hide in approved points around the valley, places they knew they would be safe for a short time. A number of residents agreed to stay in the village to draw attention away from those that could not fight. Su Lin barely slept that night, though she wasn't the only one having a fitful sleep.

* * *

Something wasn't quite right here. In fact, something was very wrong. Koshchei was in a place he had never been before, but reminded him too much of places he had left behind, or rather, places he had yet to see. He never wanted to see this place, wherever it was. He was surrounded by mist, dense fog like he had never seen in his near eighty years of existence. As a rule, he hated feeling helpless, and that was exactly how he felt now. He felt closed-in, choked, trapped. He hated that feeling.

He blundered his way around, holding both claws out in front of him, grasping for anything. He tripped and sprawled face-first on the ground. When he looked up, he found himself staring at a pair of feet that hadn't been there before. The leopard looked up further, then in shock he recoiled, scrambling away.

Jiao Shen smiled thinly at his old comrade, his body looking remarkably well-fed despite the very obvious fact he was dead.

"It's good to see you, Asmodei. What, surprised to see me?"

"Shen..." he breathed, suddenly finding it very hard to catch his breath, or settle his pounding heart.

"Do you know where you are, Asmodei? Surely you know. You've always known. This is where you belong. With us. With the damned."

"You didn't think you'd get away with it?"

Koshchei whirled and gasped to find a very healthy-looking Jiao Xiang, who, though grinning, had an unmistakeable predatory look on his face. "Did you think you'd get away with what you did to me? With what you almost did to Dalang?"

"He'll be the end of you, you know," Huang chuckled, somewhere within the mist where Koshchei couldn't see him. "He took me out with my own poison...what do you think he'll do to you?"

"He is veak!" Koshchei hissed. "He vas veakest of all of you!"

"Weak, my ass," Feng seethed from somewhere within the mists. "You know it, I know it, we all know it."

"Your time's coming, old man," one of the Twins said over his shoulder. Koshchei could never tell the difference between them. The twins unnerved him, how they were so similar in appearance and attitude, little demons the both of them.

"Soon," the other Twin said, "You'll be down here with us."

"Only there's no purgatory for you," Shen warned, stepping forward. "You know what awaits you here. By Solstice end, that is exactly where you'll be..."

Then the leopard felt something tightening around his neck, and though he grabbed at whatever unseen force was suddenly cutting off his oxygen, he felt himself getting weaker, and weaker...

Koshchei came awake with a jolt, sinking his claws into the bedframe and panting wildly. His blue-green eyes darted around the room. He looked to be alone, but he wasn't going to risk it. He tried to stand and immediately found out what had been choking him: during his fitful sleep, one of his bedsheets had twisted around his neck in a most uncomfortable noose. Snarling, he ripped the sheet to shreds and stumbled out of the crumpled linens to the washbasin, which he filled with ice cold water and splashed over his face.

He had been having those dreams for a while now, well over a month. Each night they got worse and worse. Each night, another one of his victims showed up. The man he had buried alive in the chest. His parents. His siblings. Sonya. And now even the entire Jiao family (minus the two that actually made it to Heaven, and the one that was still alive) had come to pay their respects and perhaps drag him off to the Underworld.

He wasn't ready. He wouldn't let them. With trepidation, he knew Shen was right. He knew what awaited him when he died.

_**If**__ you die_, he reminded himself. _You are the Deathless. You are invincible. No one can stop you now. You are so close to your goal. Do not lose focus._

He couldn't lose focus, not now. The Winter Solstice festival was only two days away, and he intended to strike just as the villagers were distracted with holiday cheer.

Still seething at himself for being spooked by a fevered nightmare, Koshchei picked up his cloak and wrapped it tightly around himself. He had never suffered cold before, not like this. Was this further proof of his age, that he was not long for a cold grave with his name on it? _No_, he decided, _my work is not yet done_.

He left the room at the inn and made his way downstairs. The chow dog was a remarkably cool fellow, though perhaps he had seen far worse than Koshchei (which the leopard doubted), so when the leopard finally made an appearance, the chow dog just glanced up at him, then pointed across the room at the black wolf warming himself by the fire.

Koshchei stalked up to him, and Zi Hao turned to face him. "I got bad news," he said.

"Vhat news?"

"Lang's gone. He, Xu Jiu, and Yu Wang all turned themselves in to the army. They're in prison." Hao expected Koshchei to get angry, but the leopard was incredibly calm...which made the wolf very anxious.

The leopard nodded for the wolf to continue as he reached inside his tunic for his pipe and tobacco pouch. Koshchei's paws were shaking as he stuffed tobacco in the pipe's bowl, but Hao just took that to mean the leopard was cold. Asmodei Koschei was not capable of feeling fear, as they say.

"They just...walked right into the jail," the wolf continued, "and gave themselves up. They've been there a few days now."

"Hmm," Koshchei hummed, still listening.

"But that's not the worst."

Koshcheit lit his pipe and inhaled the smoke, then exhaled the smoke through his nose. It seemed Hao had been waiting, holding onto this bit of information, for quite some time. He seemed excited, like a puppy, to share this information, perhaps to get back into Koshchei's good graces, maybe convince the leopard that Hao was once again Alpha material. _These wolves and their silly quests for power. When will they learn? _"Vhat is it?"

"The Wu Sisters. They betrayed us."

The leopard froze, and felt another terrible chill rush through his body. "_Vhat_?"

Hao nodded. "I overheard them talking. They've been really after this guy named Zang Deshi, an army officer. They've been working with Jiao Dalang the whole time—they warned him about your hit on his kid. I wouldn't be surprised if they're still trying to find a way to take you out instead."

No. No, it wasn't possible. He should have expected this, he should have foreseen it. He knew never to trust the Wu Sisters for anything, and yet he had. Why, _why_ had he made such a novice mistake?

"Vhere are they?" the leopard asked. Even he was surprised by how calmly he was taking this betrayal.

"Nobody knows. After I overheard them, they just disappeared."

"They are not dead," Koshchei said definitively. "Too smart for that."

Zi Hao wasn't sure he had heard him correctly. "They're too smart to be killed, you mean?"

"_Malchik_, they fool me...females smarter than they look...too smart for own good." _Just like you, don't you agree, Sonya?_

What Koschei didn't know was that Zi Hao was also perfectly aware of what the old leopard had tried to do to him. He had overheard that much from the Wu Sisters. Intentionally putting him in the line of fire to an almost certain death...he had been set up. But he was no fool (not entirely). He knew Koshchei was crafty, and had to be to live this long. No, what Hao wanted more than anything was to get Lang. The little bastard had planned his death, probably been planning it for a long time...Hao wasn't going to let some upstart punk take him down. He was an Alpha, a _true_ Alpha...and no Omega would take that from him.

_He better be grateful he's behind bars_, he thought bitterly. _Because if he ever leaves, he's mine._

* * *

"You know, for turning ourselves in, I expected a lot worse."

"Weren't you tortured for twelve hours?"

"Yeah, but at least they cut me down every so often to get some rest. Think Koshchei would've spread it out like that?"

The three remaining wolves sat in a shared cell, all of them sporting bruises, scrapes, and at least in Xu Jiu's case, a broken arm. The large wolf grimaced when he moved his arm the wrong way. "Least they haven't used the rat torture."

"What exactly is the rat torture anyway?" Yu Wang asked, his arms poking out the bars and trying to peer down the hallway of the Valley's one (rather miniscule) jail. "No one ever explained it to me."

"They light a fire," said Lang. He sat in the corner, slumped against the wall like a boneless rag doll, listless and still. His voice had lost all hint of youth, all sense of emotion, in a tone as dead as the look in his eyes. He no longer made eye contact with anyone, cellmate or guard. He continued, deadpan, "They light a fire and place a cage full of rats on top of it. There is no lid to the cage. Your body serves as the lid. In order to escape the fire, the rats scurry up...right through you. That's the rat torture."

Yu Wang and Xu Jiu shared a look before the former cleared his throat. "I'll take garroting again over that, thanks."

"Man, never figured the Valley of Peace to use torture. Seems...weird."

Wang snorted. "That's because we turned ourselves in to the _army_, idiot. They're not villagers and farmers. They're trained for this sort of thing."

"It's better than what could have been," Lang said. His cellmates silently agreed. Whatever the army did to them was nothing compared to what Koshchei would have had in store for them.

But Lang made both of them very nervous. When he said anything, it was usually quite disturbing. Otherwise, the youth sat there, in the same corner, all day and all night, catatonically staring into space and listlessly watching dust motes dance in the light coming from the only tiny window in their cell. It was not pleasant. Prison is never pleasant in the slightest, but it didn't help knowing their cellmate was a tad emotionally and mentally unstable.

Even the guards knew it. The last time they'd interrogated Yu Wang, he'd heard the guards saying something about "that creepy kid that came with them. He doesn't even scream when he's whipped. Nothing. He just...hangs there, doesn't say anything."

Yu Wang was this close to begging the guards to put him in another cell. Just in case the kid was turning out more like Koshchei than he thought.

Lang wasn't unaware of the effect he was having on his cellmates. The youth had only been interrogated once, and the soldiers decided it wasn't worth it. The only thing he said was "It's my fault, it's all my fault. I'm a monster, and I'll be killed by a monster..."

His back still stung from the whipping, but nothing hurt worse than the emptiness he felt in his heart. He wished Koshchei had just physically taken out his heart and left him there to bleed out. It would have been less painful.

Duo's death was his fault. He would still be alive if Lang had never said anything. He would still be alive if Lang had never killed Bao Nu. He would still be alive if the kid had never even gone to see Koshchei in the first place at the Wolf's Head Inn. Gods, had it really only been two months ago? It felt like two years.

_He could still be alive if it weren't for you,_ he told himself. _You're worthless. You've always been worthless. How could you hope for any better? You should've killed yourself while you had the chance._

His eyes were too dry for tears. He barely slept, barely ate, and he preferred it this way. He had given up. Let Koshchei come get him if he wanted. What kind of future did the wolf have now?

* * *

Zang had not been having the best week. Scarcely a day after Gao's death and his killing Liu, Zang started getting the feeling someone was watching him. His suspicions were justified when one night, not three days after Liu's killing, he woke up in the middle of the night and saw a knife on his bedside table. The tip had been stabbed into the wood, with a note attached:

_We know what you did._

He had destroyed the note.

It didn't end there. It happened again the next night. This time the knife was embedded to the headboard directly above him. The note this time read: _There is blood on your hands. Soon your blood will be on ours._

A postscript read: _Don't fall asleep._ _We'll be waiting._

He woke up another morning and found claw marks on his window sill, as if some beast—three of them—had been watching him in his sleep. Staring at his prone form all night long, and could have made a move at any time. He barely slept the next two nights. By the time his body gave into exhaustion, he once again woke in the middle of the night and sat up in bed to find someone sitting in a chair in the far corner...staring at him with narrowed, glowing red eyes.

He had not screamed that loudly since he was a child, still scared of the monster under the bed. Quon had come to his rescue, but as soon as the youth flooded the room with light, the figure in the corner was gone. The chair was undisturbed. Quon, however, was clearly disturbed to see what his captain had been reduced to. Zang was a mess. He now spent his days constantly looking over his shoulder. He wasn't safe in the night. He used his days for sleep. His nights were reserved for waiting in the darkness, sword drawn, waiting for the she-demon to return.

Quon avoided him even more now. In his fevered, sleep-deprived, paranoid mind, Zang had begun believing that Quon was in some way working for the Wu Sisters. No amount of reasoning would convince him otherwise. It had gotten to the point where, just the night before, he had stood above the sleeping tiger, sword drawn, watching him, waiting for him to get up and move. It was almost dawn when Zang gave up, starting to see the folly of this belief. Quon was innocent, surely. At least that was what he believed until he got back to his own room. There were three sitting on his bed. Three female snow leopards.

He ran from the room, shocked and yelling in alarm. Finding his courage, he ran back into the room...only to find it empty, the sheets undisturbed, as if no one had been sitting there just a moment before. The windows were all closed. The closet, wardrobe were empty.

Zang had laughed, a sort of disembodied, disbelieving laugh. He felt like he was going insane. He _knew_ what he saw, as he explained when Quon came running into the room after hearing his panicked yell. The Wu Sisters were in the valley, and they had just been in his room. Quon tried to calm him, explaining that it wasn't possible. The windows were all locked from the inside, and the bedroom door showed no signs of forced entry. Zang decided that they had to have had a key, some other way of getting in. Quon offered before Zang could order him: he would stay in the same room as the black warhorse, an added guard. Someone to fight away whatever went bump in the night.

Zang knew, using what little logic was left, that he was being ridiculous. He was behaving like a child afraid of the dark...and now Quon was acting as a mother soothing a frightened child, sitting up with him until he fell asleep.

Quon had now sat him down in his room, pouring green tea into a cup for the horse to enjoy. "Black tea won't do you much good. The herbalist said green tea," Quon said. "And here's the packet of herbs to put in it, to help you sleep."

Quon had no aspirations for power, Zang told himself. He had no claims to his rank...

"You drink it first."

Quon looked up at him, confused, and concerned. "Sir, the herbs are specifically for you. The dosage is based on your health and build; it would affect me differently..."

Zang shoved his teacup into the tiger's hands. "Drink it, that's an order."

Quon stared at him again, in that look that said he was truly concerned for his leader's sanity, and took a long drink of the tea, without hesitation. Zang waited until the youth had set the cup down and gently pushed it across the table to him. Then the horse grew angry. "You think you can mock me? How dare you mock me like this!"

"Sir?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"You developed a tolerance to it, haven't you? It wouldn't affect you, admit it!"

"Captain, I don't know what you're talking about," he said calmly, but he was looking increasingly worried.

"You poisoned this tea!" Zang accused, seething. He would have struck Quon had the tiger not suddenly stood and drained both his cup and the horse's. When the tiger slammed the cups back on the table, he hissed, quite insubordinately, "Do you think I would drink two cups of poisoned tea? It isn't poisoned. _Nothing_ is poisoned. No one is trying to kill you."

"The Wu Sisters—"

"No one has seen them in weeks. They've probably left the valley."

"I saw—"

"Sir," Quon said seriously, yet calmly, "I know I have no business asking this of you, but as a favor to me, please try to calm down."

Zang barely heard him, but it did bring him back to his senses, if only a little. He was being ridiculous. He was Zang Deshi, Captain Zang Deshi, and he was not afraid of any specter, real or imagined. And besides, what would he contemporaries think, if they saw him like this? He'd lose his rank, perhaps be dishonorably discharged, and he couldn't risk that. Not when he was so close to his goal.

The warhorse sighed. "You're right, Cadet. Perhaps these sleepless nights have been doing little for my health."

"I understand, sir, which is why I went to the apothecary to get you this special tea," the tiger explained. "I...permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Granted."

"Sir, I have been very worried about you. See...I grew up without a father, and, despite...despite all that has happened, for better or worse, you are the closest thing to a father I have ever had. Please, if nothing else, take this medicine for me. Right now, if indeed the Wu sisters are still around, as you believe...then you are the only one I can trust. And if you are not in top condition, then we can't bring Tai Lung in to justice."

That did it. For some reason, perhaps the lack of sleep, Zang freely accepted a cup of tea and drained it. Quon poured him another cup, and the horse drank. One more cup of tea, and he would sleep peacefully, though already on the second cup, he was beginning to feel the herbs' effect. He barely finished his third cup of medicine before he slumped into bed, only slightly aware that Quon had taken the time to drape a blanket over his commanding officer and leave the room just as Zang closed his eyes and finally—mercifully—got some sleep.

What Zang didn't know was that Quon had lied through his teeth. And the horse had been right to worry about the tea. It was intentionally stronger than Quon had told him...but that revelation would be saved until later.

* * *

"You're _sure_ this is the right way."

"Of course I'm sure."

"You've a map on you, then?"

"Don't need one."

"What d'you mean _you don't need one_? When was the last time you came 'round here?"

"Dunno. Ten, Twenty years ago? How much can change in twenty years?"

Tai Lung groaned and rubbed his eyes. He noted that even though Altai had quite a natural confidence in his abilities, as it turned out, he had an awful sense of direction. Even Little Brother seemed to know this. The red panda would insistently tug on the rhino's pant leg and point frantically at the moss-covered side of the tree trunk for example, and point in the proper Eastward direction. Then Altai would suggest moving south instead, much to the child's irritation.

Little Brother wasn't the only panda getting annoyed.

"Dude, we've been at this for _hours_, let's just go this way—it should take us back to the main road," Po said, motioning down a well-traveled path.

"No way," Altai said. "The main road is too dangerous. What if you get spotted?"

"We're dressed like monks, Altai," Po pointed out. "Do we really look like a threat? And besides, we got a kid with us."

"Exactly! We're prime targets for bandits, and if the army finds out who you are..."

"One," Tai Lung said, holding up a digit, "We can hold our own in a fight. Two, dressed this way, someone would have to be courting some bad karma to attack three blokes and a child dressed as monks. Especially if one of those blokes stands and walks like an old soldier. Trust me, no one in their right mind would attack the likes of you."

Altai hesitated, then shook his head. "Fine, we'll take the main road. I was hoping for a shortcut..."

"Uh-uh," Po said, and Little Brother similarly shook his little head. "No shortcuts. I've been on enough missions with Mantis and Monkey – shortcuts are just asking for trouble."

"So we're taking the risk of running into the army and anyone who would try to attack Tai Lung on the road?"

Po drew himself up to his full height. "Let 'em try," he growled, making the hair on the backs of his companions' necks stand up.

Tai Lung was grateful of course, but he had noticed that since he'd confessed his deepest, darkest secret to the panda that Po had taken up a...harder appearance. It was as if the panda took personally what had happened to his friend. Not that he blamed him; had their positions been reversed, Tai Lung was quite comfortable knowing he would commit cold-blooded murder for his friend. And as much as he knew he should have been bothered by it, he wasn't...which made him wonder if he truly was as reformed as everyone believed.

As the snow leopard predicted, no one accosted them on the main road to the Valley. In fact, just for grins, they took a detour, back to the Xiao Tou Inn. When they mentioned it to Altai, the rhino had stiffened considerably, and vehemently suggested _against_ this plan. Po was adamant, and Tai Lung deferred to his friend. "Since when have you been so paranoid?" the snow leopard asked. Altai said nothing in return, his face set like a statue's.

Before long, they recognized where they were. "Hey," Po said, "Isn't the Xiao Tou Inn not far from here?"

Tai Lung glanced at their surroundings then let out a delighted laugh. "Brilliant! We're much closer than I thought. Let's stop to get a bite and we can continue on our...oh no."

They had crested the hill, and now looked out over the lake. The inn was gone.

In its place were the charred remains of old waterlogged timbers, some parts still smouldering.

Little Brother hung very close to Po, as if the child knew something awful had happened here. Po stood in shock, and his first reaction was also the most foolish. He started to dash down the slope in case anyone was left alive. Tai Lung grabbed the panda's sleeve.

_Don't. It could be a trap._

_There's people that need our help! _Po protested.

_Think about it, look at the place...they're beyond our help._

Po hated to admit that he was right. Even far below, he could make out the sight of bodies on the shore. Altai spotted them too, and promptly picked up Little Brother and held the child against his chest, shielding his eyes from the carnage.

They slowly descended the hill. Tracks were still clearly visible in the ground that had taken on a thin sheet of frost.

"Its like a whole army came through here," Po said, his own voice sounding disembodied to him.

"In a manner of speaking," said Altai, who handed Little Brother over to Tai Lung. "This wasn't Imperial. I think we're looking at Koshchei's handiwork."

"How d'you figure that?" Tai Lung asked. Then he saw.

The bodies of the innkeeper and his family were covered with claw marks...clearly fatal claw marks. It nearly made him sick. Then something else occurred to him and he gasped:

"The guards in the tower, by the bridge..."

"We have to warn them," Po said, immediately starting off in the direction of the Thread of Hope.

Once again, they were too late.

When they banged their fists against the door, they were surprised to find...

"Well! What's all this, then?" Mrs. He said contemptuously. The female crane narrowed her keen eyes at the quartet. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"Crane's wedding," Po said, removing his wide-brimmed hat.

She nodded. "Ah, I thought so. You're the freak's friends."

"We're Crane's friends too, you know," Tai Lung said flatly.

Mrs. He appeared to bite her tongue, which served him fine; he really didn't want to get into another shouting match with her, like what had happened after Crane and Viper left for their honeymoon.

"I assume you've done something with that temper?" she sniffed.

Tai Lung forced a smile. "Something akin to that. Listen, we're in rather a rush, are those bull guards still around?"

"They're dead."

"Oh—_what_?"

She sighed. "I found their bodies in a shallow grave. I don't know why the murderer didn't throw them over the edge, but I suppose there's a miracle so their families can give them proper burials..."

"Koshchei did it intentionally," Altai said darkly. "He meant it as a warning."

While this settled into the panda and snow leopard's mind, Mrs. He gasped. "Koshchei? Not Asmodei Koshchei? Absurd! He's too old, he must be dead."

"Ma'am, I wish. May we come in?"

She looked over her shoulder, hesitated, then shook her head. "I'm afraid it wouldn't be prudent."

"Why not?"

"I...found another victim. He looks like he might have been in a battle with those types that crossed the bridge earlier yesterday. But I'm beginning to suspect he tried to take his own life..."

Po placed his hand on the doorframe...and felt something. He held his hand up, right in front of Mrs. He's face, and waited. Then he felt it again, stronger this time. Furrowing his brow, he marched forward. "We need to come in."

"What? How dare—"

Altai pushed her aside. "Sorry, ma'am, official army business."

Po muttered a quick thank you to the rhino as he marched into the house. He followed it...the _chi_. That's what it had to be. A very powerful _chi_. He could heard Tai Lung's quickened breath behind him and knew the snow leopard felt it, too.

_It's strong_, the feline sensed.

_Very strong,_ Po agreed. _She's wrong. He hasn't given up, not yet. There's something familiar about it, though..._

When they reached the tiny barracks, with room for only two beds, they found the wolf in the farthest bed, against the wall, staring out the open window at the gray sky. He was heavily bandaged, some places blood had seaped through the white bandages and had dried to a stiff dark brown. His ear twitched at the sound of footsteps, but he otherwise didn't make a move. Po didn't need him to face them, however.

"_That's_ how I knew him!" Po said. "He's the lousy tipper from Haijin Province!"

Tai Lung smacked his palm to his face. "Po, this really isn't the time..."

"He stiffed me fifteen percent gratuity!"

"Po, _not now_."

"He'll die soon," Mrs. He said with a sigh as she came up behind them. "I did all I could, he won't last."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at him, it's clear that his body can recover...but he's given up."

Tai Lung narrowed his eyes at the wolf, who now stared forlornly up at the ceiling. The snow leopard refused to take no for an answer, then dropped his rucksack to the floor and ripped through it.

"What're you doing?" Po asked.

"I've waited long enough," Tai Lung said, finally pulling out the Phoenix Scroll. "We know now I can heal with a touch...there has to be a trick to save him."

"Why save him if he doesn't want to be saved?" Mrs. He asked.

"Because I didn't want to be saved, either," he growled at her. "I needed someone to guide me. When you can't walk, you crawl, and when you can't crawl, you get someone to carry you." He yanked the stopper off the end and pulled the encased scroll out. Holding both ends in his large hands, the paper felt delicate and fragile in his hands. Now or never.

He unrolled the scroll.

Po held his breath, but kept his distance out of respect.

Altai and Little Brother also stayed back, the former sensing that this was something sacred and private.

Tai Lung froze, staring straight at the scroll. It clattered to the floor from his nerveless paws. He muttered something that Po didn't catch, and he appeared to be visibly thinking something over, running scenarios through his head. And then Po saw the look of recognition cross his friend's face...and that was when Tai Lung acted.

He rolled up the Phoenix Scroll, put it back in its case, then knelt next to Duo's bed. He took the wolf's hand and leaned close, and whispered something into the wolf's ear. Squeezing the wolf's hand, he let go and placed his hand over Duo's heart.

He pressed down against his chest, and Duo let out a shout, that turned into a scream, that turned into a long high-pitched howl.

Before Po, Altai, Little Brother, and Mrs. He's startled eyes, they watched as Duo's body convulsed, the bed shaking beneath him, then even more startling...light started emanating from his body. They thought they were imagining things...and then there it was! Golden light had engulfed Tai Lung, and the light traveled from the snow leopard, down his arm, and into Duo's chest, which then spread to the rest of the wolf's body. He stopped shaking, but his body was soaked with sweat, his breathing labored. And then suddenly, he opened his mouth to howl again, and...something poured out from inside him. Po swore it looked like black smoke, but it may have been his imagination, but it looked like the smoke had a face...contorted into a grotesque mask of hatred and pain, that dissipated into thin air so quickly that he may have only imagined it.

And just as suddenly as it had happened, the golden light dissipated and both Duo and Tai Lung slumped over, Tai Lung against the headboard, and Duo back into the pillows. Tai Lung, exhausted, moved out of the way, just as Duo sat up and vomited into the very handy chamberpot. Both canine and feline were panting with exertion, Duo panting and coughing, spitting out what looked like black bile.

"Shit..." the wolf swore, "I'm dying."

"No, you're not, now man up and take your medicine like a good boy. And do try not to swear; there is a child present."

"Screw you, cat."

"Back at you, dog."

Altai coughed and cleared his throat. "So...incredibly freaked out here, someone want to tell me what the heck just happened?"

"The Phoenix Tear technique," Tai Lung said with a satisfied smile. He clapped a hand on Duo's shoulder. "You're not dying...quite the opposite."

"Thrilling."

"You _should_ be thrilled."

"Give me a break; in the last week, I found out this kid I thought of as a brother is a psychotic killer, I got the crap beaten out of me by an old guy, and he threw me off a cliff. Not having the best week."

The snow leopard wryly smiled. "You want to talk about getting beat up by an old man, do I have a story for you..."

"My guy was seventy-eight."

"You win."

Altai stared at Tai Lung, then turned to Po, "Phoenix Tear technique?"

"Long story," Po said.

The rhino snorted. "I'm not going a step further until I hear it."

"Altai," Tai Lung said, "We're rather pressed for time..."

The rhino stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest. "Don't care. If you want my help, you need to trust me to trust you."

"Don't you already trust me?"

"You've been hiding something from me, both of you. If it's something that'll get me and Little Brother killed..."

"I'm the Phoenix Warrior."

The rhino's brow furrowed at the snow leopard. Little Brother, Mrs. He, and Lan Duo similarly gave him dubious glances. "You're the what of who?" the rhino asked.

Po nudged him, "Like, I'm the Dragon Warrior, embodying all the things dragons stand for like peace, harmony, and balance; and Tai Lung is the Phoenix Warrior, the spiritual equal of the Dragon Warrior, who embodies all the things phoenixes are known for, like life, death, and rebirth. Also, it means having second chances. There was a Dragon Scroll, which I got, and also a Phoenix Scroll, which Tai got from Master Sun Bear of the Phoenix Temple."

"Lies!" Mrs. He said. "I don't believe a word of it. That is just a legend, a silly fairy tale."

Little Brother made an angry noise at her and stamped his little foot in frustration. Po said to her, thus translating for the little monk, "It's not just a legend. It's a real place, a place people go to in order to rebuild their lives, to learn how to get a second chance at life. To be reborn, y'know, spiritually. Together, according to this old prophecy, the dragon and the phoenix will restore balance to the empire through their warriors. And that's us."

"Really? And just where is this mythic temple?"

As soon as Po started to answer, it quickly became apparent that it didn't make his story any more plausible: "It, uh, kinda burned down..."

Mrs. He glared at him. "A likely story, and how very convenient that there's no proof."

Tai Lung spoke up before Po could counter her argument, "Let it go, Po. People won't believe it until they're ready to believe it. In the meantime, we've got bigger things to worry about." The snow leopard turned to Lan Duo. "Do you agree to help us?"

"Why should I?" Duo asked. He hung his head and muttered, "My uncle was right about me. I'm a lazy good-for-nothing, and the first and only time I tried to do right by somebody, I failed. You don't want my help."

"Yes we do. We can't take down Koshchei without you. You're the only one we have right now who knows the whole plan—"

"I don't _know_ the whole plan; he kept most of it a surprise until the last minute." The wolf sighed, "Look, I don't know what his motivation is. I know he's after Jiao Dalang, but that's about all I know. I don't know why he brought Lang into this, but I do know he plans to kill him once he's outlived his use..."

"And you care about this Lang, don't you?" the snow leopard asked.

Duo looked him right in the eye, so that the feline could see the fire smouldering in there. "More than anything. I thought I could save him..."

"And you still can. Please, Duo, help _us_, and you can help him."

Duo was silent as he thought it over. He stared down at the floor, studying the woodgrain as if it held all the answers he sought. He thought hard. He thought about Lang, and all the trouble he was in. There was a chance, a part of his mind said, there was a chance they could run away from this, go out on their own, form their own pack, be a real family, gather others like them, other outcasts...a pack of omegas. A family of omegas. He liked the thought of that. But mostly he thought about Koshchei – what the leopard would do to him if he knew he was still alive, what he would do to Lang...

The wolf growled and stood up shakily. Po and Tai Lung moved to assist him as he wobbled on his feet, but he batted their hands away. "I'm going. I'll fight him. I'll kill the bastard if I have to. He's not getting Lang, not ever."

"That's all well and good," Altai said, "But what about weapons?"

Duo glared at him. "Give me a spear, and I'll show you what I'm made of."

The rhino blinked, then turned to look about the room. "This place is completely cleaned out."

"That it is," Mrs. He attested.

"Where's the closest place to get weapons?"

"Where else?" Po asked. "The Jade Palace."

* * *

Today was the day, she could feel it. Too many battles had honed Tigress's senses so that she could tell when a battle was about to break out. It was like being able to smell rain or snow in the air. Or knowing a storm was coming by the throbbing of an old fracture. Tigress was sure that this was the day. The Winter Solstice. It would happen today.

She rose and dressed before the day dawned, a deep green tunic with long sleeves to protect her against the cold. She roused Dalang from his own fitful sleep; he didn't bother to dress for the weather, opting for his usual uniform of a sleeveless shirt and long pants. Neither tiger had slept well the night before. When they had retired to bed, snow had already been falling for a few hours, and now their bedroom, and likely the whole house, was cold.

Shang still slept soundly in his crib, lovingly tucked in with many blankets to ensure he was warm. Tigress paused long enough to gaze into her son's crib, a short, quiet moment that she would hold on to as a reminder of what she was fighting for.

Dalang, as quietly as possible, moved to the closet and unlocked it, drawing out his weapon. He handed some small arms over to Tigress: mostly knives that she hid inside her long sleeves, a pair of nunchucks, for Monkey's use, and several small explosives. Su Lin had taught Tigress how to use them: it was simply a matter of throwing them down hard into the ground, and they would make a big bang, blow up a cloud of smoke...a smoke screen to give her time to run if the battle got too heavy.

Tigress wasn't worried so much about herself as she was for the villagers, and, most importantly to her, her husband.

Dalang finished strapping knives to his belt, hiding another knife in each leg binding, stopping only when Tigress hugged him from behind. She held him as tightly as she could without hurting him, and he could tell that this was a hug inspired as much by love as desperation. Without words, it told him 'be careful, I love you, I would be lost without you'.

He laid his hand over hers, and squeezed gently, letting her know the same. Together, they stood over their son's crib, holding each other in a last moment of comfort before they made their way out. Not too long after, Mei Xing came into their bedroom to keep an eye on Shang. Still with her knitting, the female snow leopard sat on the edge of the bed while Su Lin came in to stoke up the fire and get the room warm. She could only spare a short few moments before she tiptoed out, leaving the two felines to themselves. Mei Xing locked the door and noted different furniture in the room she could move to barricade the door if the worst were to happen. She tried not to think about it. Instead, she focused on the pattern: knit and purl, knit and purl, as the sun turned the morning sky blood-red.

* * *

Koshchei rose early that morning, while it was still dark. This day was the shortest day of the year, and he had ordered the horde to move out long before first light, to take the villagers by surprise. He intended it to be nothing short of a massacre; nothing less would appease him. There would be blood today, one way or another. The leopard craved it.

His dreams had been haunted again. This time by his parents. His siblings. And Sonya. They had each been pale, wan-looking, with sunken dead eyes. His mother had been the worst. He had never seen that look in her eyes before. They burned. They burned with hatred as she silently pointed an accusing finger at him. His father, then his siblings, all followed her cue, pointing their claws right at him, and shuffling forward to overtake him. But it was Sonya who struck, her throat still bleeding from where he had ripped it out. Her lips were pulled back in a snarl to reveal her fangs that flashed white in the misty darkness that his dreams had been enveloped in. And she descended on him, without mercy, the same way he had done to her.

He had never felt so close to his own demise as he did then. That nightmare had shook him more than he cared to admit. But he had to admit it, finally. He was nearing his end days...and he would have quite a reckoning when it finally happened. Sonya's appearance said that much. His time was coming. And when he died...she would be waiting. They would all be waiting...to rip his soul apart. They would leave nothing left, nothing to fall into the deepest pits of Hell...and that scared him worse than any amount of hellfire ever would.

He kicked Zi Hao out of the wolf's bed and snarled, "Get them up, it is time naow."

But Koshchei was in for a weird and very off-setting awakening. When he finally entered the village, he was struck by something, but he couldn't identify it at first. Then his sharp eyes picked it up. None of the chimneys had smoke rising from them. The windows—the ones that weren't shuttered—were all dark. And there were red lanterns. Red lanterns everwhere, hanging from every eave, every overhang. The whole town was richly decorated for the festival. But there were no footprints in the fresh snow. Nothing was disturbed. Absolutely no sign of life.

Then he realized: no one was here. The entire village was deserted.

The ones under his command seemed to understand this as well. The leopard didn't need to look back to know the hairs on the backs of their necks were standing on end. He knew his was, and if he was unsettled, they had to be terrified. There was nothing worse than walking into a town that had until recently been a bustling and thriving center, only to find it had turned into a ghost town overnight.

Koshchei recovered himself long enough to motion to Zi Hao to fan out, search every road, every street, every alley. It couldn't be right, it wasn't possible. Koshchei led a group straight to the center of the village. He knew it was a bold move. He wasn't in any mood to play games. As he walked, snow crunching under his feet, he grew steadily angrier and angrier.

They knew he had been coming. They knew he was already here. Had the Wu Sisters warned them all? They had betrayed him once, he could feel comfortable knowing they would do this, too. He expected some sort of resistance...but not complete abandonment. No, no something was not right here.

A bunch of snow fell from a rooftop and landed with a heavy plop on the ground below. Koshchei looked up to the rooftops, scanning for archers. Nothing. He saw where the snow had fallen, looking for footprints. Nothing. But he couldn't get past the fact that he knew he was being watched. He knew someone was there. And by Hell, he would find out who.

Then something else caught his eye. He looked to his right, down the street, and saw what was unmistakeably a jail. Slowly a cruel smile grew across his features as he made his way straight to the jail. He had a hunch, and he would follow through on it.

* * *

Koshchei was certainly not the only one freaked out by the deserted town. Zi Hao and the group he was leading was in no better shape. The black wolf walked through the ankle-deep snow, his hand never straying from the hilt of his sheathed sword. Overhead, he thought he heard a bird's call, a "caw-caw, caw-caw!" On impulse, he drew his sword, gripping the handle tightly as he nodded to the ones following him to have their weapons at the ready.

Zi Hao led the way, sword drawn, when they heard movement up ahead. He motioned for the others to stay behind as he made his way forward. Whoever ot whatever it was, it would be around the corner in no time. Hao raised his sword to bring down on the unsuspecting villager, to have the first kill of the battle...when around the corner came a panting croc. Zi Hao jumped out of the way just in time. The reptile had a panicked look in his eye and squealed like a little girl at a slumber party to run into the brigade. The black wolf sneered. "Gods, you're pathetic. Grow a pair—"

"Dont go over there!" the croc blurted out, pointing back the way he came. "We're all gonna die! We're all gonna—"

"Will you shut up and tell me what the hell happened?"

"We got ambushed, guy, all of us! I'm the only one who made it out! Vicious...they were so vicious, like, like you have no idea, man!"

Now Hao was getting nervous too. "What, they have warriors here, in the village?"

"Yeah!"

"And this is the only way to the Jade Palace..." he said, looking up the main road, then up the steps to the top of the Jade Mountain. To win this battle, that palace had to be taken.

The croc, however, was not having it: "No it's not, find another way, or you will all die! I'm like, super-serious, guys!"

"I'm not afraid," Hao said.

"Um, I am," said a bull.

"Ditto," agreed a lizard.

The wolf snarled. "Oh _come_ on! These are farmers and peasants, what harm can they do to us? The Furious Five are nowhere to be found, and they're not the ones who took out your group, are they?"

The croc shook his head.

"See? We can handle it."

When they got back to the house in question, Zi Hao did indeed see the bodies of the croc's comrades out in the street. There were ligature marks on their bodies, around their throats and limbs. Whoever did this was very skilled.

"There!" the croc said fearfully, pointing at the door of the house.

The others stood still and watched as the door opened and out came...

...Mrs. Chin, the rabbit.

"Um...where?" Zi Hao asked.

"There!" the croc insisted.

"What, behind the rabbit?"

"It IS the rabbit!"

Zi Hao looked at the croc, then back at Mrs. Chin, then glared back at the croc and said, "You stupid bastard, you got us worked up over nothing!"

"I'm telling you, guy, that's no ordinary rabbit! It's the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered rodent you've ever set eyes on! Look, that rabbit has, like, a vicious streak a mile wide!"

Hao glanced back at Mrs. Chin, who was serenely surveying the snow as she knit a scarf from a skein of cream-colored wool kept in her pocket. Her needles clicked rapidly as she worked, and she sighed wistfully at the snow-capped landscape as if she had never seen anything so beautiful.

"Vicious streak a mile wide, huh?" the wolf repeated with a sneer.

"She's a killer!" the croc insisted.

"Bull!" the bull snorted at him. "I'll take care of her, you little coward."

Hao nodded in silent encouragement and the group watched as the bull stomped up to Mrs. Chin, still knitting away.

"Hey, lady—"

The rabbit held up a finger. "Just a minute, dear, have to count." With the same finger, she counted each stitch on her needles, then, satisfied she had the right number, began to finish her row. The bull snorted, then raised his axe high over her head.

Mrs. Chin struck.

She lept up and kicked him right in the gut, then higher still and nailed him on the chin. The length of unfinished scarf she had still hanging from her needles wrapped around his neck and when she landed she yanked hard on the unfinished work and brought the bull down with her. He hit the ground with a hard thud and a plume of snow falling up around him. Then, quick like the bunny she was, Mrs. Chin used her knitting needles to hit pressure points in the bull's back, leaving him paralyzed, facedown in the snow.

The whole exchange had happened in less than twenty seconds.

Then, carefully, she unwrapped the scarf-in-progress from the bull's neck and surveyed her work. Then she frowned. "Oh shoot, I dropped a stitch!"

Hao's mouth hung open. So did the rest of the group, collectively. "Holy shit," the wolf gasped.

"I warned you!" the croc said. "I _warned_ you, but did you listen? Oh no...no, you didn't, didn't you? It's just a _harmless little bunny_, isn't it—"

"Oh _shut up_," Hao growled. He pointed at the rabbit and ordered his men, "After her! I want her dead!"

Emboldened by their leader's apparent fearlessness and the knowledge they outnumbered her, the other outlaws charged. Mrs. Chin only looked up in alarm and ran back into her house. She barely had time to close the door behind her when an ox burst through the door and right into the middle of...

A knitting circle.

Perplexed, the outlaws who barged in stared at the circle of six females—a pig, a goat, a sheep, a goose, and another female rabbit, Mrs. Chin's elderly mother-in-law—and the six females similarly stared back at them. However, their knitting needles never stopped clicking away as each female worked on a scarf-in-progress, in various colors. They pulled yarn from tightly wound balls in baskets by their feet, and Mrs. Chin's mother-in-law in particular kept her knitting clicking away at lightning speed. She peered up through her tiny glasses at the tall ox blocking the doorway and huffed, "_Honestly_, if I had known we were having more company, I would have made more dumplings. Daughter, what ever shall we feed our guests?"

"I'm sure we'll think of something, Mama," Mrs. Chin replied. "Perhaps they have a request?"

The ox managed to recover quickly enough to make his demands known: "Surrender or die! We're taking over this village, lady, so either clear out, surrender, or..."

"Or die? Yes, dear, heard you the first time, I'm old, not deaf," the mother-in-law snapped. "But I'm afraid we will do neither. We will not surrender, we will not leave, and we certainly won't die."

Before the ox could react, the old matron flicked her scarf out, whipping it around his ankle and yanking hard. The ox fell on his back and was dragged further into the house. The other women made their attacks:

The sow thrust into a croc's side with her two needles, blocking his _chi_ and making him fall to the floor in a heap. The gander tripped a fox with her basket of yarn, wrapped her scarf several times around the hapless canine and then tugged sharply, sending the fox whirling into two others. The nanny goat first headbutted the lizard, tripped him with her hoof and managed to get behind him and wrapped her scarf around his neck as he fell. The ewe dodged sword thrusts by letting the blade pass right through her wool, irritating the white wolf wielding it, until she struck out right at the center of his abdomen with the blunt end of her needles, twisted, and sat back to continue knitting as he fell frozen to the floor. Meanwhile, Mrs. Chin and her mother-in-law tag-teamed to finish off the last stragglers.

Zi Hao, having overheard the melee inside, managed to poke his head in a window to see what had happened. He felt the blood draining from his face as he watched these knitters take out every single one of his fighters: some strangled, others tied up, though most frozen by blocked _chi_. Feeling discretion was the better part of valor, the black wolf ran, going off to see if he could find Koshchei to tell them that they were not as alone as they had first thought. And that these were most certainly _not_ regular farmers.

Meanwhile, back in the house, the ladies had resumed their knitting, completely ignoring the heaps of unconscious outlaws tied up on the floor with thick knitted cords. From up in the rafters came a sinuous figure who joined the ladies around the table and poured a cup of tea for each before serving herself.

"I have to say," Viper said, "That was really very impressive! I mean, I had my doubts..." which was why she had been there in the first place, in case the ladies could not hold their own. Fortunately, that fear had been short-lived.

Mrs. Chin only wrinkled her nose and twitched her whiskers as she smirked. "Oh that's nothing. You should see what we can do with socks!"

* * *

Xu Jiu was roused from his deep sleep by a loud slam. A deep sleeper by nature, it typically took a lot to wake him. Not this time. He tried to peek outside the cell's bars to see what was happening. It was a quiet, cold morning, and the light outside the barred window showed that it had stopped snowing during the night. But it was quiet, and, like the cliché in the stories...it was too quiet. Except for the slamming sounds, that grew louder...and closer.

Finally the heavy wooden door slammed inward further down the hall, wood splintering as it was ripped from the lock. The fat wolf didn't know why, but he had a feeling that it wasn't one of the guards back to give out more torture.

Sure enough, he was right. He hated when he was right.

Asmodei Koshchei stood on the other side of the bars, glaring into the cell with the three wolves, all canines now roused and alert. Yu Wang knew well enough to stay back away from the bars, regarding the leopard very fearfully; he knew the only thing keeping him alive were the iron bars separating him from the Demon of the North. His already pale face lost even more color when Koshchei pulled out a set of keys and set one into the lock and turned. The door opened with a loud creak that rang out through the empty jail like a death knell.

Lang sat on the floor, impassively staring at the leopard as he entered the cell.

Koshchei ignored the shaking Yu Wang and instead focused on Lang. "_The fat one_," he said in Russian, "_He is injured?_"

"_Broken arm,_" Lang nodded.

That was all Koshchei needed to turn, grab Xu Jiu by the head and shoulder, then roughly snap the wolf's neck. Xu Jiu was dead before he was even aware that the leopard had passed judgment on him. "Haff no place for useless things," he said in Chinese. He leveled a glare at Yu Wang. "Vell?"

Still shaking with fear, Yu Wang bolted for the door, obeying the unspoken order. Koshchei turned back to Lang, who returned his look with a blank stare. "_I figured it was only a matter of time_," the young wolf said in Russian.

"_You figured right_."

"_This wasn't my idea._"

"_I know; you're stupid, but not that stupid._"

Lang brought his knees up to his chest. "The villagers left in the middle of the night, the village is deserted. No idea where they went. The jail's guards went with them. Somehow I doubt they just decided to abandon this place."

"You are thinking vill be, how you say, opposition?"

"I'm comfortable betting my life on it, sure," Lang said. He shrugged, "Not like you'll keep me alive if I'm wrong, right?"

Koshchei allowed himself a small smile. "So, decide to join dark side, eh, _malchik_?"

"Join? I thought I was already there."

Koshchei didn't like that Lang suddenly had a mouth on him; before, the youth would not have dared to speak to him so plainly, so irreverently. But he had seen it before: Lang knew he probably wouldn't live to see the end of this battle, so what did he have to lose? Lang probably thought that, if he were going to die anyway, he could either go one of two ways: completely against Koshchei and die a (stupid) hero, or join the leopard assassin entirely, and give in to the darkness inside him.

It appeared to be the latter.

Lang heaved a heavy sigh and stood, popping his back as he stood. He glanced over at Xu Jiu's corpse and rolled his eyes. "Never really liked him."

"You are villing to kill?" Koshchei asked, ignoring the dead wolf.

"Yeah, I'll kill. If I'm going to Hell, I might as well give the gods a good reason to send me there." Cracking his neck, he walked up to Koshchei then passed him, heading calmly for the door. "I'll need a weapon."

"That I can give. Spear?"

"Spear."

Koshchei smiled cruelly, knowing he had, in some small part, already won.

* * *

The croc that had once been beaten up by Master Mantis (the very first victim of the Staying Still For a Really Long Time Technique) was finding it hard to keep his cool. He had known war, and had gone into villages that had been plundered, looted, raided, the residents all run away or killed, and the destroyed buildings staying empty for years until nature reclaimed them, as no one would dare settle in a place where ghosts roamed.

This village, right now, was far creepier than any of those villages. He and his band peeked inside houses, finding coals smouldering in the fireplaces, candles burnt out at the bottom, food still on the tables. It was as if the villagers had all just dropped what they were doing and left, and left everything behind. Nothing was disturbed, valuables were still in those houses, but the croc still ordered his men not to raid them. Something just didn't feel right. He knew it as soon as he stood in the doorway of one of those houses. He felt like he was being watched. Whether it was a ghost or something more corporeal, he wasn't taking chances.

But now he was far too creeped out to stand it. He gave a fateful order to his men:

"Burn it all down. If they're there, flush 'em out."

His men struck tinder to torches, flames leaping to life. One of them held the flame to a roof and watched the flames take to the eave...

...then suddenly go out.

The outlaw tried again. Set the roof eave aflame...then it went out. Another outlaw tried on a different house, with the same result. Before his men could utter the fear that perhaps spirits were protecting the houses, he ordered them all to throw the torches into the houses.

They didn't get that far.

As soon as they drew their arms back to throw, a small brown shape fell from one of the rooftops, landing with a soft "plop" in the snow. Twisting a bamboo staff around in his skilled fingers, the assailant struck each outlaw in quick succession, taking them out as swiftly and silently as possible, until each torch fell into the snow, the flames extinguished with soft hisses.

The croc was left looking at perhaps the scariest thing he had ever seen in his life. Though he had never seen it before, he knew it by reputation alone:

"Shifu!"

The bamboo staff hit the croc squarely on top of the head, knocking him out cold.

"_Master_ Shifu, punk," the red panda snorted. After admiring his handiwork, the red panda jumped back up to the rooftops and continued on his course for the Long and Feng cafe and more importanty, their upstairs apartments. In all his planning for the invasion, and training Dalang, and ensuring all the villagers had evacuated safely, Shifu had had one major oversight: no one was there for Mei Xing.

He snuck in the window of the nursery, the only window still open. As soon as he landed on the floor though, he got hit in the head with a small wooden object. "Ow! Mei Xing, what—"

"Shifu?"

"Lotus?"

Wu Lien was already there, her folded fan having hit him on the head as a way to protect herself. Though Shifu suspected that wasn't the only reason she hit him, in hindsight. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Same as you, I reckon," she said, sticking her fan into her belt. "My girls can handle themselves just fine out there...but Mei Xing..."

"I know, I came as soon as I remembered. How is she?"

Grateful for a topic that did not include her past, Wu thumbed out the door, "She's doing chores."

"What? She's supposed to be on bedrest and she's doing chores?"

"_You_ try reasoning with her, I've been at it for hours and she won't listen to me! Much like some other snow leopards I know..." she added dourly. "I must have a special power to make felines do exactly the opposite of what I tell them."

Shifu could have made a low blow about the lie she had told him concerning the Wu Sisters, but instead said, "Well, they're all felines, and you know the old saying about herding cats..."

Wu actually cracked a smile at that. "How is it out there?"

"Still quiet, little bouts of activity here and there. Villagers are picking them off one by one. I wager it won't be long until either half the outlaw force runs in terror at 'the haunted village', or they get angry and try to destroy it. Fifty-fifty, it seems like."

"Well, we expected something like that. How was our general area?"

"Quiet. As long as it stays that way, this house won't be bothered."

Wu let out a sigh of relief. "Thank the gods. Mei Xing will be glad to hear it."

"Where did you say she was?"

"Right now? Probably folding laundry. She was doing dishes earlier. I offered to help, but she refused, and when I tried to help anyway, she got upset."

"Upset?"

"She started crying. I just let her do whatever she wants, right now. I'm only here in case she...well, I hope she _doesn't_, and I won't say it, lest I jinx it, but I'm here just in case."

He knew what she meant: she had to be here in case the snow leopardess went into labor. And if that happened, Shifu didn't want them to be alone. He knew very little about childbirth, but he figured that if Wu would be busy with the laboring female, someone had to be there to fight if – gods forbid – the house came under attack. Sonam was out with the villagers, so that just left Shifu and Wu.

Shifu and Wu, who were still having a fight.

That last part still irritated him. But by far the most irritating thing going on was that Mei Xing—who was supposed to be on bed rest—was instead running – well, wobbling – around the house, cleaning and organizing, in a flurry of activity. And then there she was, wobbling past the door carrying some folded laundry.

Shifu followed her to keep an eye on her while Wu busied herself looking out for the enemy. His offers to help were rudely cut off by the spotted female, but it gave him time to notice a few things. She would occasionally stop and press her palm against the small of her back, take a few deep breaths, then after a pause, which started to become progressively longer and longer, she would pick up her tools and get back to work; right now, she was fixing a wobbly table, for example. Shifu had never been in a situation like this, (and Mei Xing had practically bitten off his head when he offered to fix the table for her) so it was hardly fair to him when Wu Lien came back from checking the perimeter and yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said, outraged that the leopardess was doing such manual labor. Mei Xing ignored her, stood, wobbled a moment, and went back downstairs for something. "This is too much! Order her back in bed!"

"She won't listen to me!"

"She won't listen to me either! But her spotty behind needs to get into that bed before—"

"Auntie?" Mei Xing called. "Where's the good kettle?"

"Check the sink, dear. And another thing—" the red panda said, turning her attention to Shifu again. "I just got some visitors: my daughters. I understand you've been giving them orders."

"Well yes..."

Arms akimbo, she accused, "You have some nerve ordering my daughters around..."

"Oh, you mean the daughters you neglected to tell me about?" he bit back. Suddenly the unspoken truce had deteriorated into their fight once again.

"Wha—WHAT exactly did you WANT me to say? That I raised three girls as my own and they grew up to give all black sheep a bad name? Is THAT what you wanted? And what about you!"

"Don't you dare bring Tai Lung into this!"

"Why the hell not? That's your biggest failure, isn't it? And need we bring up Tigress—_both_ of your children are emotionally inept copies of _you_!"

"At least I taught them self-respect!"

"Self-respect, my striped tail!"

"HEY!"

Both red pandas turned to the stairs where Mei Xing stood, holding a steaming tea kettle in one hand and had an array of towels under her other arm. The snow leopardess sighed and said, "Okay, really? You're still fighting about this? Sure, if you want to throw your marriage away, fine. But just remember you both agreed that whatever was in the past, stayed in the past, and that worked for you two. And speaking of working, Shifu, I need you to finish up the dishes downstairs, I've got a couple pots soaking in the sink..."

"WHY AREN'T YOU IN BED?" both red pandas yelled at her.

"Yeesh, chill, that's where I'm going. I just wanted to make sure the house was clean for the next few days."

"Why, are you expecting company?" Shifu scattingly replied.

Then she bit back: "As a matter of fact, _smartass_, my baby's probably going to be here by midnight, the way these contractions have been going. So yeah, _I think I'm expecting some damn company_."

Both Shifu and Wu immediately forgot what they had been fighting about. Mei Xing, however, despite having every right to be afraid, stood there on the landing, staring them down...the absolute picture of calm. "So...are you gonna wrap this up? I got hot water for washing and towels to wrap him up in, so whenever you're ready..."

"Wait!" Wu shouted. "Mei Xing...you're in labor?"

"Yeah, think so. Pretty sure this isn't another false alarm."

"So all the cleaning..."

"Yeah, I'll be indisposed for the next few weeks, so might as well make sure everything's clean. Plus, all the moving around helped the pain..."

When Shifu realized that the contractions were the reason for her frequent pausing all morning during her rounds, he responded, "How long have you been in labor?"

"Umm...not exactly sure. But I think the contractions hit early this morning. That's when I got started cleaning—at first, I thought it was another false alarm." Hoisting the tea kettle in her hand, she turned to her bedroom. "Anywho, see you in there!"

* * *

At that moment, not too far away, Tai Lung felt a slight jolt, and then a chill. Po noticed this: "You okay, buddy?"

Perplexed, the snow leopard nodded. "I...feel fine. Huh, odd sort of reaction, isn't it?"

"Do you know why you shuddered?"

"You know, I haven't the foggiest...eh, it was probably nothing."

"How much longer until we get there?" Duo griped. He was leaning heavily on Altai's arm. The rhino kept glancing down at him worriedly. "Do you need to stop?" the rhino asked.

"No, gotta keep going."

"Duo," Po said, "If you need to take a breather, just say so."

"No, I can't afford to," he said, straightening up. "If I rest, that's less time I have to save Lang from Koshchei. The sooner I get there, the better."

"Yeah, but...if you get there and you're exhausted, you won't be able to fight Koshchei," the panda pointed out.

Duo looked at the Dragon Warrior as if he had lost his mind. "Who said anything about fighting him? I was just gonna grab Lang and amscray."

"I have to admire the simplicity of your planning," Tai Lung admitted.

"Shut up. I don't have any other plan aside from that."

"So if you're not taking down Koshchei..." Altai said.

Duo pointed at the panda and snow leopard, "Yeah, I thought that was their job, taking out bad guys. I'm a bad guy. Bad guys don't take out bad guys unless they're even worse bad guys. Isn't that how these stories work?"

"So sure you're a baddie, eh?" Tai Lung asked, somewhat smugly.

Duo ticked off his sins: "Lets see...petty larceny, grand larceny, kidnapping, burglary, breaking and entering, attempted murder, murder...you sure you want me to keep going? It's a pretty long rap sheet."

"Mine's even longer," Tai Lung reminded. "And I've a good feeling you're hardly as bad as you purport yourself to be."

"Whatever."

"There it is!" Po said excitedly. The travelers stopped long enough to admire the snow-covered landscape of the village ahead and the Jade Mountain towering above it. Altai, even though he was used to such lovely vistas through his years of travel across the empire, had to stop and admire it, despite the seriousness of the task ahead. Duo, however, was most struck by the sight.

"So that's it..."

"What's it?" Po asked the wolf.

Duo pointed at the view ahead of them. "That's why you fight so hard. Damn. If this were my home, I'd fight for it, too."

Po and Tai Lung shared a knowing smile before continuing down the path. Altai stopped them, however, grabbing them by the shoulders and yanking them back under cover. "Wait!"

"Why?"

"Look!"

They poked their heads up, snow leopard, panda, wolf, rhino, and tiny red panda, and saw what was going on below them in the early morning light: battle.

Po's heart fell. "Oh no, we're too late!"

"Nope," Altai said, with a little relief. "We're right on time. Looks like it just got started."

Tai Lung jumped up. "Right, we need to get in there."

"What about weapons?" Duo reminded them.

"We'll stop by the Long and Feng. If Dad's still there," Tai Lung said confidently, "There's bound to be a whole blessed arsenal."

Getting to the Long and Feng undetected was no easy task. They had to dodge various bands of outlaws that vastly outnumbered them. Though Po was more than happy to take them on himself, Altai convinced him that discretion was the better part of valor, and they soldiered on. Finally, the Long and Feng came into sight. They snuck in the front entrance and tried the door. Locked.

"Around the back," Po whispered. "Follow me." Around the back they went, and found that the back door was likewise locked. But the nursery window was still open.

"Right," Tai Lung said, dropping his pack. "No one's home, but I'll just swing in there, unlock the door from the inside."

"I dunno," Duo said, dubiously eyeing the dark window. "This stinks of a trap."

"Don't be paranoid, it's not a trap." He launched himself up, grabbing hold of the windowsill and pulled himself up through the window and into the nursery. He stopped for a moment, realizing that it had been finished in the time he had left. It was stunning. Crane must have painted murals, and Sonam had to have built those cribs: one for Shang when he was a little older, and one for Tai Lung's own child.

He felt his chest tightening. His child, and Mei Xing...now that he had come home, he realized how foolish he was to have ever left.

Then he realized that his chest tightening had nothing to do with emotion. Someone had performed a nerve attack on him. This became apparent to him when he hit the floor face-first.

"Ow."

"Tai Lung?"

"Shifu?"

The old red panda was so overjoyed, he hugged the snow leopard, momentarily forgetting that the latter was still in the body-bind. "Thank the gods you're back!"

"Um..."

"We were getting worried!"

"That's great, but..."

"And I must say you have _impeccable_ timing."

"Shifu? The nerve strike?"

"What? Oh, right. Sorry." Shifu quickly released the snow leopard from the nerve attack and allowed him to sit up. Tai Lung popped his back and sighed. "Were you expecting company?" he quipped.

"Ah," Shifu paused. "In a manner of speaking, yes, we are expecting company..."

"Good, because Po and a couple others on our side are waiting outside."

"Allies?"

"Men we can trust."

Shifu sighed. "Good, the more we have on our side, the better. No doubt you've seen the battle?"

"Bits here and there, yes..."

A door swung open down the hall. Before anything was said, Shifu called back, "It's Tai Lung, he's back! Po, too!"

Wu rushed in, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, an apron over her dress. She grinned ear to ear to see him. "Oh thank heavens! And excellent timing indeed! Come this way!" She took the snow leopard's hand while Shifu went down to let the other warriors inside.

Wu led Tai Lung across the hall to his room, where Mei Xing sat on the edge of the bed. He stopped short in the doorway for several reasons: one, he had forgotten just how long he had been gone, and he had truly missed her; two, in the last two months, she had – well, there was no nice way to say this – she had gotten _huge_. But seeing her relieved smile to see him made it okay. He rushed to her side and took her hands in his and gave her a hearty kiss and hug.

"I was beginning to think..." she started to say.

"Don't. I would never do that to you."

"I know." She was smiling at him. He noticed how tired she looked, how worried, but also that there was a thin sheen of sweat on her brow. "Darling? Are you warm? I can open a window..."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Can I get you anything, then?"

"No, Auntie's pretty much gotten it taken care of, and anything she can't get, Shifu's got. But honey, there's something I need to tell you..."

"What is it?"

Mei Xing gasped and grasped her stomach, biting her lip until a spasm of pain left her. Unsure what happened, but worried nonetheless, Tai Lung gripped her hand. "Was it the baby kicking again?"

"Something like that. Listen, sweetie...it's time."

It took him a minute for this to sink in, and when it did (of course), Po and and the others were standing in the doorway to watch him freak out:

"It's time? It's..." he looked into his wife's eyes, then noted the hot water, the towels, Wu wearing an apron and ready with certain herbs... "Time? It's...oh. Oh. Oh gods, _it's time_!"

"Yeah," his wife said with a weary smile. "Yup, kid's poppin' out. Good thing too, being pregnant was really starting to get on my nerves."

"How are you so calm?" he asked, mystified. Because he was absolutely panicking.

"Honestly? I'm plotting ways to get back at you for doing this to me."

"Save the plotting for later," Wu said, "This isn't even the hard part."

"_She's_ got a hell of a bedside manner," Tai Lung heard Duo mutter, then yelp in pain from Shifu smacking him.

Mei Xing looked up to see the other males standing in the doorway. She smiled and waved at Po, but the smile fell to see the other three. "So...new friends?"

"Two new, one old," Tai Lung explained, and introduced Altai, Little Brother, and Duo. Mei Xing pointed at the wolf:

"I remember you—you stiffed me fifteen percent gratuity."

Duo scowled and grumbled while Little Brother giggled: "Leave one bad tip and no one lets you forget it..." He glared at Mei Xing, "I'm only being nice to you because you're knocked up."

She grinned at him. "Lock him in this room with me. Give me five minutes with the wuffie."

"_No_," her husband said; he knew her too well.

Altai grabbed Duo by the shoulder and squeezed hard, a silent signal for the wolf to shut his trap if he knew what was good for him; while travelling with Tai Lung, the rhino had been told too many stories about Mei Xing's temper. "We forgetting there's a battle outside? And we need weapons?" the old soldier reminded them.

"Good luck," Wu said. "Sonam took all the ones we had to give to the villagers."

Po and Tai Lung stared at her, then at Shifu. "The _villagers_?" Po asked incredulously.

"Ah, yes," the red panda said, "We've trained the villagers to use whatever tools were available to them. Lotus style, mostly, applied it for use by farmers, merchants...even Mr. Ping. Yes, I was as surprised as you. Tigress has largely orchestrated the offensive; she's rather good at it."

"Yeah, but we knew Tigress was good at battle planning."

"Yes. Methinks that she could give the Army's best a run for their money," Shifu said with a proud smile.

Altai had to smirk at this.

Mei Xing hissed as yet another contraction hit, gripping her husband's hand through it. Once it had passed, she let go of his hand. He had to massage it to check if any bones had broken. "You need to get going," she told him.

"I can't leave you, not again, not now."

"You can, and you will," she said stubbornly. "I have Auntie here, I can handle the rest." When he looked like he would protest again, she said, "Do you really want to be here to hear me plotting out your future torture for putting me through this?"

Tai Lung thought about the list of things she'd said she wanted to do to her ex-husband, and decided against staying. "Probably not."

"Damn right you don't." She leaned forward and kissed him again. "Go out there and kick some ass. I'll be fine."

Still unsure, Tai Lung had to have Altai and Po tear him away so they could fight. Po reminded him, "You can protect her out there. You can protect them both."

"He's right," Altai said, "There's not a whole lot you can do right now."

"Oh there's plenty I can do."

"Anything _besides_ drinking and fainting at the sight of your wife in labor?"

The snow leopard scowled at the rhino. "One, that is a horribly over-used trope, and I doubt that happens as often as people say. And two, I don't faint."

Po coughed and cleared his throat. Tai Lung glared at him. "Okay, that was _one_ time, and I had lost a lot of blood. That was a perfectly legitimate reason..."

"Speaking of legitimate reasons," Duo spoke up, grabbing Little Brother by the back of his robes. "Is there a good reason to bring the kid into battle with us? He's just going to get in the way. OW!"

Duo let go when Little Brother kicked him soundly in the chin...the mere fact that such a small child could scale the height from the floor to the rather tall wolf's head no less remarkable than the fact none of them had expected it. The little red panda scowled at the wolf and actually growled. And Duo was actually watching him now very warily.

And Wu had witnessed the whole thing.

"Well! Don't we have a little hell-raiser?" she grinned. Anyone who knew the old woman knew what that smile really meant. Little Brother, however, was perfectly oblivious, and actually appeared flattered to be getting attention from an elder. Wu trotted over and offered her hand. "Looks like we have quite a little warrior, don't we? Do you know, young man, that I am in great need of a brave, strong warrior? Someone needs to stay here with me and Shifu, someone to guard us and keep us from harm. Could you please?"

Somehow, that worked. Little Brother smiled and nodded excitedly, but not without first turning to Altai with a questioning gaze. The rhino gave his consent, grateful for Wu's quick thinking. She had yet one more trick up her sleeve: "A strong warrior like you looks like he's in need of a couple cookies. How does that sound?"

While she distracted the red panda child with sweets, Shifu gave his last instructions to the warriors: "Go out the nursery window, cover your tracks. We evacuated the villages to lure the enemy in, then strike."

"Good old pincer movements," Altai nodded.

"Take the back path up the mountain, you know the one," he nodded to Po and Tai Lung, "The one that runs by the forge. Sonam is bound to have something stockpiled. There must be something there for each of you. Be quick, be silent, and most of all...be careful."

With that, he sent them on their way. Shifu sighed, wondering how the day would pan out. He banished all worries from his mind, however, when he heard Mei Xing's pained whines from the next room. The battle would have to wait for him. He had some more pressing matters to attend to.

* * *

A couple notes:

The croc who tried to warn Zi Hao about Mrs. Chin and her knitting circle is loosely based on Fung, the croc from Legends of Awesomeness. Imagining Joe DiMaggio's voice as I wrote the dialogue helped immensely. Sure, it doesn't beat a Scottish accent, but it'll do.

Speaking of Mrs. Chin: Yes, I had to. It was too easy. Should I have avoided it? Probably. Could I have avoided it? Like hell I would.

Mei Xing's 'false alarm' is known today as Braxton-Hicks contractions. According to my research [never had a baby (yet), so all pregnancy-related issues are the result of painstaking research], Braxton-Hicks contractions are characterized by initial discomfort, and irregularity. "Real" contractions are supposed to be much more painful [again, I've never been pregnant], increase in frequency over time, and are much more predictable. And contrary to the displays in the media, a woman going into labor is not really something to panic over...except during a high-risk pregnancy, or when any number of issues pop up. So yeah, admittedly, Mei being perfectly cool about going into labor may seem a bit unbelievable, but I bet if you ask your mothers about the day you were born, you'd hear some pretty funny stories...

And I know Tai and Po got there a lot sooner than it seems they should have...I just figured no one wanted to read about them crossing the bridge again. And the Phoenix Scroll will be explained in greater detail later on. I'm still working on Chapter 20, so please be patient.

Anyways, please read and review, it is greatly appreciated!


	20. Chapter 20: The Battle, Part 2

This took a loooooong time to write. I've been incredibly busy at work, plus planning my wedding and visiting various relatives, generally keeping a social life, and a bad dose of writer's block, has largely prevented me from updating as soon as I'd like.

I know it's crap, I'm trying to wrap this story up as quickly as I can because I feel terrible leaving it unfinished for so long. The plan is to be done sometime this summer. Please be kind.

Disclaimer: I do not own Kung Fu Panda, or any of the characters created by Dreamworks Animation Studios. Any of the original characters belong to me, so please do not use them without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 20: The Battle, Part 2

* * *

Tigress watched the outlaws' progress from her hiding place on the roof. She had wrapped a scarf around her mouth and nose, mindful of the fog her breath would have made in the frigid air. Many of these baddies were veteran warriors; they would have picked up on something like that, and her cover would have been blown.

A short few rooftops away, Crane was cleverly disguised by a chimney. Monkey was within sight, clinging to the bottom of an eave on a nearby 's eyes flicked to her left when she detected movement. She saw just the slightest glimmer of scales against the rising sun. Viper was in position. The cooing of a dove from Monkey was the signal that Mantis was also in position. She trained her eyes on where the insect would be hiding.

The magistrate's palace was easily the largest residential building in the village, and, being a palace, was also the most likely to be raided. Tigress had little love for the magistrate; she found him an arrogant and detestable man, and she certainly wasn't alone in thinking he needed an attitude adjustment, preferrably on the business end of her own fist. But it was the perfect target. So, while the man and his family were huddling in some dark hole (she frankly didn't give a damn where they were exactly, as long as they were out of her way), she decided that the best course of action was to take out as many outlaws as possible by luring them into a trap.

Crane was initially against this. He had rightfully pointed out that the Furious Five was better at full frontal attacks, and that ambush scenarios were not in their usual playbook. Then he surprised her – and particularly his wife – when he hatched out the details just the night before. Tigress had to wonder how he became so devious, until Viper pointed out just how long he had been avoiding his mother since the wedding. He had to have gotten some practice at supterfuge to be able to avoid a harpy like that.

The outlaws were in position. The cooing of the dove got louder, replaced quickly by a mock-rooster crow. Tigress pounced. She took out the stragglers at the back, yanking them back by the backs of their shirts and slammed them into each other, knocking them senseless. Viper came out of her hiding place, shooting out like an arrow and wrapping around two others, slamming them into the wall of a house. Crane shot straight up into the sky, wings beating to give him greater height before he turned back down and nosedived right into the middle of the group.

The outlaws were taken by complete surprise. Four were knocked down senseless by Crane's powerful wings before they even knew what had happened. Before the others could react, Crane beat his wings hard, throwing up a screen of powdery snow, blinding them and providing him cover.

Into the cloud of snow came Monkey, jabbing here, punching there, tripping, and knocking down his quarry. The outlaws began attacking each other, thinking that their comrades were the ones responsible for the sudden melee. Before long, Monkey was able to sneak his way out and back to the relative safety of the sidelines, snickering as he went.

Tigress moved in just as the powdery snow settled. The outlaws' faces registered only terror to see a very pissed-off female tiger awaiting them.

Mantis triggered the trap.

Suddenly the snowy square beneath them gave way and a net swept them up and off their feet. In seconds nearly ten creatures were suspended above the square in a cleverly disguised net. Their shouts had alerted comrades in other sections of the city, whose feet pounded the streets. Tigress could feel the vibrations under her feet.

"Mantis, now!" she shouted.

Mantis jumped from roof to roof, setting off traps as he went. Soon the twang of ropes and snares gave way to the surprised shouts of the bandits they had trapped. Crane took a swoop around the square, then came down to a landing beside Tigress. "Each trap set off perfectly. Looks like we got about three-score."

"Sixty's not bad," she said. "Is phase two ready?"

"Ready and rarrin'," Mantis said as he landed on her shoulder. "Awaiting your orders, chief."

"Okay, set off the fireworks."

"You're the boss!" Monkey quipped, earning a smirk from the feline. The quintet jumped into action, each going off into opposite directions. At the tops of the houses, hidden inside the chimneys, were the signal fireworks. Mantis reached his first, drew his pincers across the brickwork and created the spark that set off his flare. Monkey cast a flint across his, as did Viper. Crane and Tigress similarly drew their talons and claws, respectively, across the stones and stood back to see the fireworks launch into the sky and explode into brilliant scarlet chrysthanthemums. Now they could only wait.

* * *

When Koshchei first heard the shouts, he thought nothing of it. It wasn't until he saw the red fireworks in the early morning sky that he paid attention. And by then it was too late. He ducked behind a nearby croc who took the majority of the arrows that had been intended for the leopard. Tossing the croc aside, the leopard assassin seethed, seeing faces peeking out from behind cracks in doors and windows. Fools.

"Take the houses!" he ordered. "Just farmers and villagers! Veaklings! Kill every last one of them!"

Koshchei however was not above believing that discretion was the better part of valor. He had not previously been aware of this. It wasn't until the sky above him suddenly darkened and he realized with horror that it was a torrent of arrows coming his way that he ducked under an abandoned cart. Some of the arrows had been going so fast their tips had gone straight through the wood, stopping just inches from his body. The rest of the creatures he had been travelling with were not as lucky, nor did they have his reflexes. Lang was the only one to escape the onslaught, taking refuge around a corner. The lupine youth crept out of his hiding place and passively looked over the bodies. "Like porcupines...they look like porcupines with all those arrows sticking out of them."

Koshchei ignored him and crawled out from under the cart and hissed to feel a twinge in his back. The old war wound was acting up. That wound hadn't bothered him in years. Not since the last time his life was absolutely threatened. So what did that say about this battle? Was he destined not to survive it?

It didn't matter. He would have his way by the end of the day, one way or another. He just needed to get his bearings, and his plan would come to fruition.

"So," Lang said off-handedly, "Farmers and villagers, huh? Looks like they got themselves an army after all."

"Shut up," Koshchei hissed.

"Where are we going anyway?" Lang asked, kicking a dead body aside.

"To make visit."

"Anyone we know?"

"Is, how you say, need to know basis."

"And I don't need to know?"

"_Nyet_."

"Fine, screw you, too."

Koshchei bit back on the growl. He did not like this change in the lupine youth as much as he thought he would have. But no matter, he would serve his purpose soon enough.

Koshchei continued on his way towards the center of town, with Lang keeping a good distance away lest another volley of arrows decided to drop in.

* * *

Back in the main square, reinforcements had arrived. The villagers that had been trained with the more complex weapons charged right into the outlaws, who were taken completely by surprise. Tigress was astounded; the plan was working better than she could have ever imagined.

Fishermen from the lakes and rivers cast their nets and became fishers of men, yanking outlaws off their feet and hoisting them high in the air. Cormorants were similarly employed under Crane's direction, picking up outlaws in their talons and lifting them high in the air before "accidentally" letting them fall.

The fact that people could and would die had occurred to Tigress, briefly, but she had purposefully put those thoughts aside. Dwelling on them would not help her, and she had to stay focused. Outlaws were falling to the villagers' weapons at a steady rate, but not enough for her liking. Too many had already been wounded on her side, and not enough on the enemy's. She was, understandably, a little on-edge.

So when someone tapped on her shoulder, the only thing they could have possibly expected was Tigress wrapping her hand around their throat before asking any questions.

Dalang, despite being married to her, did not know this. "Hi...honey..." he choked out.

Tigress immediately let go, looking sheepish, "Sorry."

"It's okay," he said a little hoarsely, rubbing his throat. "I'm sorry I'm running late, we had a major stand-off a few blocks away. What'd I miss?"

"We have about twenty wounded on our side and more falling. We may have to retreat."

Just as she finished, a half dozen gorilla bandits stormed onto the scene. Villagers, terrified of the sheer size of these armored monsters, scattered and fled as the gorillas laughed.

"Okay," Tigress said, "Now we're definitely retreating."

"The hell we are," Dalang sniffed. "I'll take care of this."

"Um, sweetie..."

Dalang grasped her hand and gave her a reassuring smile. "I got this." Then he strode forward to meet the six gorilla bandits.

They were huge. Easily eight hundred pounds each, and each meaner-looking than the next. Dalang didn't stop; he walked up to them as leisurely as greeting an old friend. "Mornin' boys," he said jovially enough. That was when Tigress noticed the shortened bamboo weapon tucked into his belt.

The gorillas' leader snorted and approached the tiger, who displayed no apparent fear. "Whoever challenges us, accepts death!"

"Wow, really? That's the best you can do?" Dalang asked with a quizzical brow. "I mean, _really_?"

"Shut up before we pound your face into the ground!"

"Don't you mean, 'shut up _or_ we'll pound your face in the ground'? It's a pretty crucial conjunction."

Tigress's shout made Dalang cringe: "_Damn_ it, Dalang, this is not the time to be a smart ass!"

Dalang forced a smile and waved back, "Thank you, honey."

"Honey?" the gorilla asked. "Wait, isn't that..."

"Master Tigress? Yup."

"And you just called her honey?"

"Yup."

"So that makes you..."

"Jiao Dalang? Also yep."

The gorilla stared at him a moment then burst out laughing. "You? You! Look at you, ha!" he shoved Dalang's shoulder roughly, causing the tiger to step back a couple paces. "Look at you! You're too scrawny to be a Jiao!"

"I didn't eat all my vegetables as a kid, stunted my growth. I hit 6'2" at age twelve and just stopped growing. My brothers never let me live it down."

"And what, you're going to fight all us...with a stick?"

"Oh, you mean this 'lil ole thing?" Dalang asked, drawing out the bamboo case. "Yeah, pretty much."

The gorilla glared at him. "Maybe you should listen to your little woman and stop runnin' your mouth."

"Gladly, as soon as you run the hell out of my town," he said as he held the weapon up in front of him with a hand on either end of the short bamboo staff.

The gorilla barely gave him time to react as he slammed his fist straight into the middle of the staff...and broke into two very sharp blades.

With a flourish and expert flicks of his wrists, Dalang swung the swords around and felled the gorilla leader in less than five seconds. As the gorilla lay dead in the street, his blood flowing between the cobble stones, his allies decided to attack the tiger who dared challenge them.

Dalng stepped to the side to avoid one fist, brought one sword up to block the war hammer from another, and used the other sword to swing upwards and slice the war hammer's handle in half. He turned around on his heel, bringing the other sword around with him and slashing at that gorilla's middle. He then brought both swords up, crisscrossed, to block the downward motion of the axe intended for his head. The tiger kicked the gorilla in the stomach and, when that didn't work, kicked lower. That one down, he swung the swords over his wrists, and thrust behind him as he dipped into a lunge, the blades going right into the guts of two other gorillas. As soon as they fell, he turned on his heel, bringing both swords together and leveled them at the throat of the last gorilla.

To his credit, this gorilla was not as dumb as he looked. He dropped his weapon immediately, staring into the eyes of a very pissed-off male tiger. Then the ape thumbed over his shoulder. "So...exit to the village thataway, yeah?"

Dalang's voice had no humor left in it: "You have to the count of five to get out and never come back."

They stared at each other again, the gorilla in wonderment and perhaps a little delayed response, and the tiger with barely controlled rage. The gorilla's time was a lot shorter than he imagined.

"Five."

Dalang's blades sliced across his neck. Dalang stepped out of the way as the gorilla fell forward. Then he became aware of his surroundings once again. He shook his head to snap himself out of it. It bothered him that he had nearly blacked out – that was one of the first signs of Dragon Rage, and he had seen Shang suffer it too long to mistake it for anything else.

"Honey?"

Dalang looked up and saw Tigress looking worriedly into his face, searching for something.

"I'm fine."

"No you're not," she said, her tone hardened. "That was murder. He had surrendered."

"No," he argued, "That was defense. I'm not running the risk of him going for reinforcements."

"_Both_ of you!" Viper snapped, slithering up Tigress's arm, "Now is _not_ the time! Have this argument later. We've got company!"

While he had tackled the gorillas, other outlaws had regrouped and surrounded them. The Furious Five were outnumbered, but so were the villagers, which was an even bigger worry for him.

"Sonam's not far from here," he whispered to them. "If we get a signal to him, he should send in our own reinforcements."

"Do we have any other flares?" Tigress asked her friend.

Viper pointed with her tail to the rooftop in question. "Over there."

Dalang looked and felt his stomach sink. "And it's just lousy with outlaws."

"Do you need help?"

"I just need a distraction so I can get up there with as few scratches as possible..."

Tigress and Viper shared a look before the serpent replied with a sly smile, "I think we can do that. Tigress, I'm thinking...Formation forty-two."

Tigress grinned wickedly. "Forty-two it is."

"What the hell is Formation Forty-two?" he asked.

Viper waved him off, "No time, too complicated to explain, just be ready!"

* * *

On the other side of the village, near the warehouse district, part of Tigress's plan was already beginning to come undone. Sonam, despite his unnatural (though perfectly rational) fear of tiny female red pandas, had resolved that his original plan was a good one. It was also important to remember that Tai Lung had to get his obstinacy from somewhere.

By the older snow leopard's side was Su Lin, who was instructing the villagers (mostly men) on how to use the little explosives. She had handed over some convenient disguised explosives to some of the females, but none whatsoever to children, who were safely hidden below in the root cellar of the house they were occupying.

Sonam gave a final round of instructions before donning his own assassin's uniform. His body and joints ached from the cold, but he wasn't about to give up the old mantle now, not when so many people needed him. And, more importantly, blowing stuff up never got old.

"Are you _sure_ Tigress won't mind?" Su Lin asked for the umpteenth time.

"Don't fret your pretty self, love," Sonam answered confidently. "Besides, it's not Tigress I'm afraid of."

"Oh right," the panda said with a raised brow. "I distinctly recall Auntie threatening certain body parts if you went ahead with this anyway."

"I _am_ rather partial to my kneecaps, yes. So what she doesn't know won't hurt me."

"How brave of you..."

Sonam shushed her. "Oi, _any_ of these men would confess to being afraid of the old battle axe, and those who won't are either lying or haven't been on the business end of her fans."

Su Lin sighed in resignation and stood next to him, peeping through the crack in the shutters. She had traded in her usual dress for a loose quilted shirt and trousers, both belted tightly around her waist. A silly little dress would not be very practical for what she had planned. "I see someone coming," she whispered.

"I do, too," he whispered back, fixing the mask to the lower half of his face. "Right, positions, here we go!"

Down below, Zi Hao and his men had finally gotten away from Mrs. Chin and the knitting circle, only to find themselves fighting off residents of the neighborhood they found themselves in. And these weren't merchants who had gotten fat off their trades. No, he was now dealing with stronger workers, men and women who were used to heavy lifting and had little trouble throwing a fully grown male wolf over their shoulders and face down into the street. Needless to say, Zi Hao was not having a good day.

"Finally!" a crocodile managed to say. "Quiet!"

Hao stopped him, and after a pause said, "Too quiet. They're watching us."

"Oh good," a voice rasped behind him. "You're not as dumb as you look."

The explosives went off, here and there, bringing forth bursts of blinding white light and loud bangs, blinding and deafening the outlaws; a few tried to run and instead ran into walls or barrels, others tripped and fell all over each other. Zi Hao had the presence of mind to cover his ears when the little bombs went off, but his ears sting rang. What little he could hear, he knew he was quickly surrounded. He drew his sword and lashed out wildly in any direction. The pressure against his sword told him he'd made contact with something soft, a few things hard, but whether it were bodies and weapons or sacks of rice and random tools, he didn't know. The light had blinded him, and he had always been a poor student of blindfolded fighting.

By the time his vision started to come back, he came face to face with a masked feline with one eye. That eye wasn't as savage Koshchei's appealing blue-green, but it was no less dangerous.

"'Ello, 'ello, pup," the feline said before drawing his own blade. Zi Hao barely had any time to block it before the masked cat launched into yet another assault. The black wolf knew he was outmatched, and also knew that he was very much alone now, thanks to the fact his comrades were now indisposed. He would either have to make a run for it, or die here, or fight dirty. He decided to fight dirty.

He ducked to avoid a swing from Sonam's blade, dipping low to reach into his leg bindings for the knife he had concealed there. By the time he straightened up Sonam had already anticipated his move, sidestepped, and brought his elbow down hard on the wolf's outstretched stabbing arm. Hao dropped the knife, and it clattered to the frozen ground and slid off somewhere. Wherever it went, Hao needed to follow. He was out of his league, and needed reinforcements.

Luckily for him, Yu Wang was not far behind. When he saw his comrade in a fight to the death, the light gray wolf ran directly for the masked feline, drawing out a weapon he had stolen off a dead body. He raised the scythe over his head to bring down on Sonam's unprotected back, when something large hit him from the side. Yu Wang slammed into the nearest wall, cracking the plaster and a couple bones. When he came back to his senses, he was being held by the lapel by a female giant panda.

And Su Lin was furious. She held him at arm's length and delivered another punch that threw him backwards a few paces. The crunch of bone breaking was obvious. Yu Wang had heard something about bears being strong, but he didn't expect the females to be so aggressive!

"Going to sneak up on someone in a fair fight?" she asked him, cracking her knuckles. "You have two options. You can either stand and fight me, or surrender to me and I let you live." She was bluffing, and she knew it; her code forbade her to harm anyone (except in certain rare circumstances, such as this one), and killing someone was by far against her moral code. She hoped the wolf would accept her terms and not call her bluff.

He called her bluff. "You?" he laughed. "You're just a panda!"

"The Dragon Warrior is a panda," she reminded him.

"He's a _male_ panda, sweetcheeks."

"Meaning what? Did a male panda just break your nose, or crack your ribs? And I'm pretty sure a male panda didn't give you that black eye."

Yu Wang bared his teeth at her. "No way, I'm not gonna stand here and have a woman speak to me like that!"

Su Lin rolled her eyes. _Not another one_, she thought. "Fine. Your funeral." she opened up a satchel tied to her hip, pulling out an incense stick. She knelt on the ground, sticking it into the frosty ground as deep as it would go. She lit it.

"What are you doing?" Yu Wang asked.

"I'm praying for you," she replied. "I think you'll need it." She stood up and adopted the same stance that Po and Tai Lung had taught her since they started teaching her basic kung fu. "Come and get it, big boy."

He did, launching into a number of punches and kicks that she quickly and efficiently blocked. They grappled for a moment or so, before Su Lin got impatient and slammed her foot down on top of his. Yu Wang wailed in pain and backed away, before getting hit in the face with another of Su Lin's punches. Then another...and another! This female panda was more than what he expected. But for some reason, for all her bravado, she still called to her masked friend, "Sonam, retreat!"

While she had turned to yell, Yu Wang snuck up behind her, twisting her arm behind her back, and pressing a knife to her throat. "That was a stupid move, babe," he hissed in her ear.

"Sonam, get out of here!" she shouted at the masked one. "I got this one!"

"Only thing you got, little girl," Wang grinned, "Is a whole mess of trouble. Now what's a sweet thing like you doing fighting in a war like this?"

"Sonam," she snapped, "I'm not telling you again, get your tail out of here, _now_!"

"Ooh, feisty, I like that," Wang said, before taking a deep whiff at the nape of her neck. "You smell good."

Su Lin hesitated before letting out a laugh. And she continued laughing. It was getting pretty unnerving. Finally Yu Wang had to ask, "What's so damn funny?"

She stomped her heel down hard on his toes, twisted around and away from the knife until she had turned to face him to give him a grim smile.

"That's not incense," she said, before making a run for it.

By the time Yu Wang realized what she meant, it was already too late for him.

The incense explosive went off, toppling the walls surrounding the wolf, and burying him beneath a pile of rubble.

Su Lin was safe, and she knew enough not to let out a sigh of relief until she was completely out of danger. Then she heard Sonam swear loudly. "What?" she asked.

He ripped the lower mask off his face in frustration. "Damned black wolf got away! Used the explosion to go off!"

"Forget about him, we need to keep moving," she snapped. She was shaking a bit, trying to fasten the pouch on her hip. "I used too much black powder..."

"You used enough to save your life; you were right. Now come on, Su Lin, we got to move!" Sonam took her by the hand and led her down the street, following the villagers, who were closing in on yet another band of outlaws.

* * *

Conditions in the birthing room were about the same as for the battle: some successes, and some drawbacks.

Mei Xing had stopped walking once the pain became too severe. Instinct and Aunt Wu's tips told her that walking would help speed up the delivery, but it hurt so much to even move her arm, that walking was out of the question. Aunt Wu and Shifu were both employed in rubbing the snow leopardess's lower back, the feline gripping the sheets tightly with each new contraction, and her whole body slackening when the contractions eased.

"How much longer?" she asked Wu.

"You're right on schedule, dear. Don't rush this."

"Check again, please."

"I checked you five mintues ago, I can assure you that little has changed."

Shifu sought to diffuse the feline's temper. "Why don't I get you some more food, maybe some herbal tea? You need your strength."

"Fine, okay, go."

Glad to be away, Shifu grabbed Little Brother and escorted the little red panda down to the kitchen. Mr. Ping was already down there, having just taken off his coat.

"Mr. Ping," Shifu asked, aghast, "You didn't just come from outside, did you?"

"I assure you I did!" the goose said. "I need to make noodles."

Shifu wanted to smack him, but held back. "Ping, we're in the middle of a war zone, and trying to keep a low profile with a laboring female upstairs..."

"Mei Xing's in labor? Why didn't you say so! I will make her a special soup!"

"Ping..."

"I will have to make sure the ingredients include things that won't upset her stomach too much..."

"_Ping_..."

"And extra thick noodles! And tofu, lots of tofu of course...though maybe I should go easy on the scallions..."

"_Ping_!"

"Yes, Shifu?"

"Your fire!" Shifu pressed. "The smoke from the chimney will alert the outlaws that someone is in here! This will be the first place they hit!"

Mr Ping flippantly replied, "Oh, I'm not worried."

"You _should_ be! What if someone were to walk right through that door and—"

And on cue, a trio of boars barged into the restaurant's serving area. Before they even got out a threat, however, Mr. Ping tugged on a cord Shifu hadn't noticed before, which triggered a booby trap featuring nearly every single kitchen knife at the goose's disposal. The boars were lucky they were standing where they were. Had they been a few inches closer, they would have been killed. Instead, they stood surrounded in a ring of knives that had stuck up in the floor. Quickly deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, the trio turned and fled, leaving their weapons behind.

"Thank you, come again!" Mr Ping called after them.

Shifu and Little Brother stared in amazement. The former had to ask, "When did you install this?"

"What, this old thing? Last night," the goose replied. "Though I've had other booby traps for years. Ah, careful you don't step to your left, there's a button that releases tongues of flame."

"Tongues of _flame_?" Shifu asked, astonished. "How did you...?"

"Sonam helped."

"Of course he did."

"And speak of the devil, here he is!"

Sonam hoisted himself over the wall and landed next to the goose, clasping a hand over his bill. "Will you keep your bloody voice down? It's bad enough that I may have been foll—oh, the trap worked?"

"Like a charm!"

"Oh, jolly good!" the snow leopard said jovially, taking off the mask. "Otherwise, how are things? How's Mei?"

"In labor," Shifu responded.

Sonam's face paled. "What, since when?"

"Since early this morning, maybe late last night, apparently. She's up in her room now."

"I'd better see to her..."

"I'll bring up noodles for everyone when they're ready!" the goose said. "Though I think I could use a little help...that room is no place for a child so young."

Shifu handed Little Brother over to Mr. Ping's care, grateful for the goose's otherwise levelheadednessand natural paternal instinct. Because the red panda was nearly panicking. By the time they got back to the bedroom, Mei Xing was laying back on the pillows, focusing on her breathing to calm herself down.

"Alright, now that we're in here, how's it going out there?" Shifu asked Sonam, closing the door behind them.

The snow leopard stopped short of the bed where Mei Xing was lying down. "First," he said, taking her wrist and holding her arm straight out, "Let's see how far you can reach..." After determining her range, he took another step back for safety's sake, then said, "The warehouse district has been cleared out, the Furious Five and Dalang were last seen downtown, which is where I'm headed, and oh right, we decided that explosives were a good idea."

"What about Tai Lung?" Mei Xing asked desperately, before Wu could lose her temper.

"No bloody clue," was the answer she received.

Mei Xing swiped, hitting only air. Her claws came within inches of the older snow leopard's face.

Wu Lien nodded approvingly, allowing herself to ignore Sonam's insubordination. For now. "You learned from the last time."

"Last time?" Shifu asked.

"He got too close to Nima while she was in labor," the female red panda explained. "That's how he got those claw marks on the right side of his face."

Shifu glared at the other elder male, "You told me that was a war wound!"

"Oi, did I ask about that scar you got on your hip?"

"How did you know about—_oh you have to be kidding_!" he glared at his wife.

Wu Lien pursed her lips. "Shifu, now's really not the time..."

"You told him about the scar?"

"I told him you _had_ a scar, not how you got it."

"I'm going to give every last one of you some scars if you don't shut the hell up and get this thing out of me!" Mei Xing growled.

Sonam sighed, "Ah, that takes me back...Except I'm rather glad I'm not the one who's being threatened this time; that's a lovely change of pace."

Wu stepped away from the bed after checking the snow leopardess's progress. "Well, you're about halfway there," she began washing her hands, "I'd give it another couple hours."

"Would the crying alert anyone?" Shifu asked.

Wu hesitated, realizing that he had a point. If the invaders heard the baby crying, they might target that house...and possibly kill everyone inside. If enough of them came in, they'd be overrun, even with two kung fu masters and one knife-obsessed goose.

Mei Xing then gritted out through another contraction, "I don't give a damn. If I live through this, and those assholes decide to come in, I'll kill every last one of them or die trying!"

"That's the spirit!" Sonam said happily. "Well, you seem to have things under control here, better go see how the Five and my pupil are doing..."

* * *

The Furious Five and Dalang were not doing so well. More and more outlaws began pouring into the main square, that was barely defended by the villagers. Farmers and fishermen were the physically strongest and able to take down their share of enemies, while the merchants and trained soldiers executed battle plans.

Formation Forty-two had been a success, however, as now Dalang had fought his way to the roof and set off the signal flare calling for reinforcements. The flare set off an angry red flower in the sky, the boom echoing off the peaks surrounding the valley. He surveyed the work ahead of him, then took a deep breath and leapt down onto the backs of the enemies below. His swords slashed and stabbed with fury, and he lost track of the number he had slain.

_Keep it together_, he told himself, _don't lose focus. Don't be like Shang or Xiang...don't lose sight of who you are. That's what Shifu told you. Don't lose sight of who you are..._

The Furious Five fought as a group, circled back to back, surrounded on all sides, but holding their own. Viper's subtlety, Crane's height, Mantis's speed, Monkey's wits and Tigress's strength were at their peak, with no signs of slowing down.

"Break!" Tigress shouted, and the Five scattered, forcing their way through the melee. The villains fell in droves as each of the skilled fighters picked them off. Dalang took his eyes off of them for only a moment to stab a boar that had snuck up on him. Tigress was moving in his direction, whether she was aware of this or not, he had no clue. He spied movement on the roof across the street. He turned to look over his shoulder. Just as he thought; the outlaws were climbing to the roof to get the drop on the Five.

He side-stepped to avoid a wolf that Tigress had thrown over her shoulder. Their eyes met across the melee, and he took the silent command. Spying a set of crates, Dalang easily scaled them and jumped onto the roof to go after the bandits. None of these outlaws were anywhere near as well-trained as any of Shen's horde had been. Dalang knew he should have felt guilt for killing them, and somehow Shifu's lessons had made their way to the forefront of his brain. So instead of killing them in cold blood, Dalang only wounded them enough to take them out of the fight: a cut here, blow to the head there, twisted arm, broken leg...

Then Dalang saw perhaps the scariest thing he had ever seen: yards away from his wife, an ox had struggled to his feet, grabbed a knife, and was slowly advancing on Tigress's unprotected back. Thinking quickly, Dalang grabbed the closest thing to him: a yak carrying a longbow and single arrow. The yak was pushed off the roof, and what happened to him, Dalang didn't care. He was too far away to throw a knife, too far away to reach her in time, and though he was a horrible shot, he had to do something. Notching the arrow to the bowstring, and feeling only slightly ridiculous, he raised his voice to the now-deserted roof.

"Feng, if you're there—and I really hope you are—I could really use your help right now."

The ox on the ground got closer, a murderous light in his eyes. Tigress was oblivious, fighting off the crocs in front of her.

"Feng," Dalang said as he raised the bow and tried to take aim. His arms were not meant for archery—they had always been much weaker, too weak, to hold a bow and arrow for long, "If this arrow doesn't hit that ox, I'm going to lose Tigress. She's the love of my life, and I can't lose her. If you have any idea what it feels like to lose someone you love..."

The ox broke into a run. Tigress's back was still turned.

"Feng, please. _Please_, help—!"

He felt something hit his arm and his arrow flew—high, too high, way too high.

Dalang cursed, but watched as the arrow richoeted off a roof tile, then off an overhanging eve, across the street, richoted off a wok...and straight into the ox's back. The ox let out a surprised grunt and fell forward. Tigress turned and saw the dead ox, then looked down the street at her husband. She looked as surprised to see him holding a bow as he was that his arrow actually hit its mark.

What the hell had just happened? He was alone, but for one strange moment, Dalang swore that he felt someone's hands on his arms, guiding them to the correct placement, and he swore it felt like someone had raised his aim to ricochet just like...

"Holy crap."

Just like Feng had done, many, many times during his lifetime.

"...Feng, if you're still in here, you are getting the _biggest_ offering of shumai _any_ ancestor has ever seen. _Ever_."

"Dalang! Heads up!" Crane shouted.

Dalang lifted the bow in the air and Crane grabbed hold, easily lifting the tiger above the crowd. The tiger let go and landed on a gorilla bandit, throwing him over his shoulder and unsheathing his swords again to face a black wolf that had just arrived on the scene.

The black wolf ground to a halt in front of the tiger, and took a step back in alarm. He blinked, then asked, "Jiao Dalang, right?"

"You want the bounty that bad, huh?" the tiger hissed, panting with exertion. "How much am I worth now?"

"I'm not interested in that. C'mon, only one guy here wants you really dead, and he's nowhere to be seen."

Dalang's anger evaporated immediately when he realized what the wolf was really saying, and after some thought, he realized with horror exactly what the old leopard had been planning. He broke off into a run.

Viper noticed him make a mad dash back into the village. "Where are you going?" she called.

"After Koshchei!" Dalang yelled back. "I know what he's planning!"

The black wolf, Zi Hao, only smirked triumphantly and slinked off down an alley to take care of his next target...

* * *

The trip up the mountain to the Jade Palace was made even more arduous thanks to the good foot of snow on the ground. Po and Tai Lung were used to the climb (though they still hated it), but Lan Duo and Altai were having a harder time of it. By the time they got to the top, they made right for the forge. The Palace was deserted, but all they needed was behind one padlocked door. Unfortunately for them, it was locked.

"Blast!" Tai Lung cursed. "Of all the times the old man has to lock his forge..."

Duo, who had finally caught his breath, scoffed and shoved him aside. "Move over, amateur." The wolf got down on one knee, took out a small case from a pocket inside his sleeve and opened it. He took out a tiny lockpick, inserted it into the lock, and the lock gave away almost as soon as the thin piece of metal made contact. Standing, the wolf took the lock off the bolt with a flick of the wrist and pushed open the door. In response to their surprised looks, he sighed, reminding them, "Okay, hello? _Bandit_."

When they got into the forge however, they were again dismayed.

"So...I'm not seeing any weapons," Altai said.

"What the...where did all the weapons go?" Po asked.

Tai Lung groaned. "They must have cleared it all out for the battle."

"Super," Duo said dourly. "Any other great ideas?"

"Just one," said Tai Lung, "The Sacred Hall of Warriors."

"Isn't that full of old kung fu artifacts?" Duo asked.

"Yes," he answered

"Really worth a lot of money, right?" the wolf mused aloud.

"I thought you were giving up the bandit lifestyle," Po said suspiciously.

Duo shrugged. "No one raised me a fool."

They made their way to the Sacred Hall of Warriors as quickly as they dared. Altai cautioned them to be as swift and covert as possible, though he didn't say why. Tai Lung assumed it was due to the fact that some of the outlaws must have already made their way to the top, and they were avoiding them as best as they could. Granted, he was confident he and Po could take on a few dozen...but Duo and Altai were a different story.

They snuck into the Sacred Hall through a back door that Po had "discovered" (Really he had fallen through it, though he left that part out whenever he told the story). The Sacred Hall of Warriors was empty, deserted but for the kung fu relics resting in their respective perches. Altai was the first to make a sound.

"Master Flying Rhino's armor...damn, that takes me back."

Tai Lung shushed him and crept along the wall. "Keep your voices down. No telling who's here or watching us."

"Yeesh, paranoid much?" Duo muttered.

"I heard that!" the snow leopard snarled.

Po was surveying the artifacts with a more practiced eye, seeing them now as weapons, not memorabilia. He had to focus. He couldn't geek out over Master Dog's ninja weapons, or the Golden Spear, or the Sword of Heroes. Po picked up the Sword of Heroes and felt the weight of it in his hand. It didn't feel right. He expected to feel strong, the weapon to be light in his hand...but instead it felt weighty and unwielding. He wouldn't be able to fight with this. The panda sighed and moved on...then stopped.

He smiled, and strode forward to the one artifact he knew now to be his birthright. Taking a moment to bow before the portrait above it, Po reached out and reverently picked up Oogway's staff. This felt right. This felt...this felt like he had always been meant to wield it. To carry it, and protect with it. Yes, this felt much better. Maybe not as bad-ass as the Sword of Heroes, but for the panda, it was certainly a much better fit.

Po paused a moment. Something was different about this exhibit. He realized that there, propped up against the same stand that held Oogway's staff, was a remarkably familiar-looking bamboo...

"Tai..." Po said warily, grabbing his friend's sleeve and yanking him over.

"What? I was thinking maybe the _pudao_ here, but..."

"Tai Lung," Po said calmly but sternly, "Look at the bamboo staff leaning up against this table.

Tai Lung did, and when he saw it, the _pudao_ in his hands clattered to the floor. "No...no, it can't be possible."

"Nothing is impossible," Po reminded him.

"But it...no, Po everything was destroyed in the fire, there's no way that's _his_ staff!"

Po reached out and gently placed the bamboo staff in Tai Lung's hands. The staff was charred and scorched in some places, and dusted with a little ash, like it had been carelessly left by a hearth. Tai Lung refused to believe it. But he had a sneaking suspicion...

"Po, I'm going to ask you to do something rather silly."

"Okay..."

"I want you to take this staff..."

"Uh-huh..."

"And bop me on the head with it."

Po paused. "You want me to hit you in the head with the stick that's currently in your hand."

"Yes."

"Okay, you asked for it." Po snatched it out of Tai Lung's open palms and gave his friend a hearty whap. The snow leopard reacted as expected, pressing his palms to his crown and letting out a surprised yowl of pain. But then he reacted in a way that was unexpected. He straightened, stared at the bamboo staff, and took it back, grinning like a child on New Year's. "It _is_! Sweet goddess of mercy, Po, it's Sun Bear's staff!"

"Wow," the panda gasped. "I know nothing is impossible and everything, but still, how the heck did that thing survive the fire? Everything else was destroyed..."

The warriors shared a look between them, looked down at their respective weapons, and came to a decision:

"You know what?" Tai Lung asked. "I'm not going to question it."

"Good plan," Po agreed. "So, we good?"

"I think so."

"Sweet."

Meanwhile, Duo was going from artifact to artifact, testing their reliability. He scoffed at the golden shield, the heavy iron glove, and had instead moved on to a display Po knew well. The wolf read the plaque beneath the sword: "The Sword of Heroes, said to be so sharp you can cut yourself just by—OW!" he pulled away, sucking on his suddenly cut thumb. He cast a glare at the sword and shook his head. "Nope, not using that one."

Then his eyes settled on the most dazzling of the weapons in the hall. He grinned. "_Now_ we're talking..."

Po and Tai Lung, however, were not as enthused. In fact, they dropped the staves in their hands, staring at Duo with twin horrified expressions. "Duo, WAIT!"

The wolf turned to look at them, the Golden Spear in his hands. His fingers were wrapped almost tenderly around the spear shaft, and standing there, he looked...almost regal, despite the rags and bandages still on his body. But what surprised them most...he wasn't writhing in agony, nor was he fully engulfed in flames. In fact, he looked like he was holding just any old spear, instead of one that was meant to turn the unworthy into a pile of ash the instant they touched it.

Duo, obviously, did not know this.

He stared back at them and said, "_What_?"

Po and Tai Lung shared a look, then looked back at the wolf, before the same smile spread across their faces.

"You know something?" Po asked, "It really doesn't matter."

"No, it matters," Duo said. "You looked at me like I just kicked a puppy. What? Can I use this or not?"

"Use it," Tai Lung said with meaning, "It looks like it was made for you."

That was when Duo gaped and then charged right at the snow leopard. Before Tai Lung could understand, Duo had already thrust the spear forward...and blocked the stab from a sword aimed right at Tai Lung's heart.

The wolf stood in front of him now, growling, hackles raised and gripping the spear shaft like a vice. Opposing him was someone Tai Lung did not know, a black war horse, who had a wild, dangerous look in his eyes. The horse was panting as if he had run from a long distance away, and this coupled with the insanity creeping behind his eyes told Tai Lung all he needed to know.

"You must be Zang Deshi."

The horse let out a little laugh. "Ah, you know who I am? Who warned you?"

"An old friend."

"Seriously," Duo hissed at him, "give me _one_ reason..."

"Ah, and I see you have your own guard dog, how charming!" the horse laughed.

Tai Lung grabbed Duo's shoulder before the wolf could retaliate. "Don't, it's a trick."

"It's working," the wolf growled. "_Nobody_ calls me a dog!"

"So are you going to hide behind your friends...and your women?" Zang taunted. "I've been waiting for you...oh yes, I've been waiting too long for this!"

"Fine," Tai Lung said, pushing Duo aside. "If you want a fight, you've got it."

_Tai Lung_, Po said telepathically, _don't fall for it_.

_Don't worry_, the snow leopard replied, _I have a feeling I can beat him alone. There's something...off about him._

_Altai said not to underestimate him._

_You let me worry about that. Get Duo and Altai out of here, I'll finish this._ "I understand you've been after me a long time?"

"Far too long," Zang said. "Because of you, many of my friends are dead."

"Yes, I get that a lot. You'll have to be more specific."

_You get that a lot?_ Po asked him. _Since when?_

_It's a ploy. If I get him mad enough, he'll make a mistake._

"Friends like Commander Vachir, does that ring any bells?" Zang hissed, twisting his sword in his hand and holding it ready to strike against Tai Lung's staff.

Tai Lung knew he had to play this part well. He needed to buy his friends some time. Po, Altai and Duo could get into the thick of battle while he took care of one crazy horse. But he couldn't let Zang in on the plan.

"That's amusing," he chuckled. "I didn't know he _had_ any friends." _I really hope I didn't sound this conceited before my reformation..._he thought to himself_. _"Well, if you're intent to do this, let's not waste any time."

And Zang didn't. The warhorse lunged forward, stabbing right at Tai Lung's middle. The snow leopard repelled the blade with the staff, twisting his body just so that the sword point ripped through his sleeve, shaving the tops off a few hairs.

_Okay, he's a bit better than I thought._

Zang swung the sword again, this time lodging it into the nearest pillar, right where Tai Lung's neck had been. The snow leopard knew his chances against a skilled swordsman like this, so he needed something better than steel, something that trumped metal.

Zang wasn't going to make it easy for him. The horse swung the blade around, turning on his hooves with a grace and fluidity that would have Sonam's approval.

Then it came to him.

He stood up, leaning right into Zang's attack, slamming the staff's end right into the horse's gut. Zang stumbled back, grabbing onto Tai Lung's arm for stability, instead tearing more at the fabric. Tai Lung finished the job, ripping the robe off his one shoulder to give him more flexibility. He didn't have the same amount of time that Sun Bear had, and in truth, Sun Bear had never taught him this move, but he needed it right now.

He closed his eyes, started his yoga breaths, lowered himself into a battle stance, hands out at his sides as if he were saluting the sun back at the monastery. He heard Zang recover. He heard the horse rise to his feet, pick up his sword. He heard the horse start to charge him.

He clenched his hands, flexed them, curled the fingers in toward his palms...and drew the claws on his thumbs across the claws on the other fingers.

Flames roared to life in his hands.

When Zang's sword swooped down to make a fatal blow, Tai Lung's arm shot up, and one claw engulfed in flames wrapped around the blade, stopping it short. The flames quickly heated the metal, travelling down until it made contact with Zang's hands. The horse dropped the suddenly hot weapon, only to be surprised by Tai Lung's other fist hitting him in the face.

Zang flew back several yards, landing hard on his back and rolled to the front doors of the Hall of Warriors. He was in pain, was scorched in some places, but he would not be denied...he would not be defeated. He would win yet!

He saw Tai Lung's feet come into view, and then the leopard leaned down. Zang reached into his belt and tore out a knife he had hidden there, jabbing it into the snow leopard's thigh. Tai Lung roared in pain, falling onto his rump as Zang tripped him and got the upper hand. Tai Lung kicked up, desperately trying to knock the knife out of the horse's hand, but Zang's paranoid insanity had given him an almost unnatural strength. The snow leopard rolled across the floor to avoid the downward strike. Once Zang's arm was down, he grabbed on with claws still enflamed.

Zang screamed in agonized rage, viciously kicking the snow leopard in the face. Tai Lung received several more brutal hits to the face and jaw, and somewhere he thought he heard Po shouting. The he realized Po was shouting in his head:

_GET UP! He's going to kill you!_

With a snarl, Tai Lung suddenly jumped to his feet, finally returning the horse's punches with a few of his own. His energy returning, Tai Lung laid into the black horse, just as he had – he realized with no small measure of horror – advanced on Shifu when he had returned to take the Dragon Scroll by force. But this was not the time for a furious speech...as much as he wanted to throw every insult at the horse. Right now, he wasn't going to give the black warhorse a chance to get the upper hand again. Altai hadn't been kidding when he warned him not to underestimate him.

"DUCK!" Altai shouted. Tai Lung reacted, missing the swing of Zang's arm, suddenly bearing another knife. Zang was fighting dirty, and the snow leopard knew if he was going to win, he would have to stoop to his opponent's level. He would have to become a monster to defeat a monster.

He took a chance and kicked Zang hard in the stomach. The horse doubled over, holding onto his middle, robbed of breath. Tai Lung straightened, panting, staring him down. Then his eyes flicked over to his friends, old and new. Altai had a stern look on his face; he knew what this battle meant, and knew to stay out of it. Duo was poised and ready to move in for the kill, held back only by a firm hand on each shoulder. Po just stood there, clearly waiting for a signal to tag-in to the fight and finish it. Then Tai Lung's eyes drifted up and came to rest on the golden dragon in the ceiling.

To defeat a monster, he would have to become a monster. That's what everyone had been saying. Tai Lung would have to give in. Zang Deshi was a monster, that much he knew, but the snow leopard had come too far and changed too much to slide back into the darkness that had consumed him for two decades. Intellectually, he knew what he had to do. But he didn't want to do it.

"All right, Captain, I've played your game," Tai Lung said. "I'm giving you one last chance to surrender. Then I will show no mercy."

"NO!" Po shouted. "That's exactly what he wants!"

"He's right," Zang said, slowly recovering, letting out short breathless laughs. "I know what an animal you are...what a monster you are...and as soon as you kill me, so will the rest of the world!"

"I don't want to kill you."

"Then you're weak. Do you want the world to believe that? Do you want your enemies to know you've gone soft? Think of your family—"

"Yes, the family you've been meaning to kill," he said with a hard edge in his voice. "You must have a death wish."

Zang didn't answer him, he only laughed, which told Tai Lung all he needed to know. _That's exactly what he wants_, he realized. _He wants me to kill him. He wants me to make a martyr out of him_.

Tai Lung cast one last glance at the dragon in the ceiling and made his decision. _To hell with destiny and your damn expectations; I'm writing my own fortune_.

So when Zang advanced on him one last time, Tai Lung was ready for him. He raised his arm up just in time and wrapped his now-extinguished hand around the horse's throat. Zang gripped at the leopard's arm, struggling and choking as the Phoenix Warrior tightened his grip.

"Kill me," Zang gasped. Tai Lung's grip slackened a bit. "Kill me," Zang said again. "I can't live with such dishonor."

"You can't live knowing I defeated you?" Tai Lung asked. "You're still breathing: you should take that as a compliment."

"Then kill me. Remember, I tried to kill your wife, your unborn child, I nearly killed your friends..." the horse laughed a little. "What are you waiting for? Isn't this what you broke out of Chorh-Gom for? Vengeance? Now you have it! See, I'm just giving it to you! _Kill me_!"

Tai Lung glared back at him. He wanted to. He knew he had to. Custom dictated it, and it would have felt good to finally take out someone who had threatened to kill so many of his loved ones. _Maybe just this one time_, a dark part of him said. _What harm could it do?_

Tai Lung's grip on the horse's throat tightened, and he lifted the black horse bodily into the air, his grip tightening further until...

...he let go.

Zang fell to the floor in a heap, gasping for air and coughing as he sucked in too much. He rubbed his throat, croaking out, "Aren't you going to kill me?"

Tai Lung knelt in front of him, making sure Zang could look directly into his eyes.

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction." Then Tai Lung stood up, turned around, and walked away.

Po and Duo stood aghast, the former just grateful his friend had not given in to the darker side, and the latter asking, "What the _hell_, man? Why didn't you kill him?"

Tai Lung shrugged. "He isn't worth it. Let the courts deal with him."

"_Hell_ no!" the wolf snapped. "The military takes after themselves! You won't get justice."

Altai cleared his throat. "Yeah, about that..." He put two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp whistle. From the ceiling, hidden in the shadows, three ropes fell to the floor, and three figures fast-roped down, one landing directly on the defeated Zang's back. The other two grabbed an arm each while the leader pushed her foot on the back of the horse's neck, forcing him to kneel on the floor.

Altai nodded with approval, "Nice job, ladies, as always."

Wu Tian looked back at the dumbstruck warriors and asked Altai, "Your orders, Captain?"

Altai replied, "Detain Zang Deshi, I want him alive for questioning. And where's Hu Quon?"

Zang's head snapped up to stare at the rhino. "..._Quon_?"

"That's right," the tiger said, sliding into the light from the shadows.

Quon smirked at the warhorse's expression. "I am eagerly awaiting your orders, Captain."

To Zang's surprise – and the other warriors – Altai answered: "Lieutenant, take Zang Deshi into custody."

Quon grinned toothily, drawing out a pair of shackles. Before Zang could respond, Quon and the two other Wu Sisters deftly fastened the shackles around the horse's wrists and another pair to his ankles. The tiger gleefully responded, "With pleasure, sir."

"_Lieutenant_?" Po, Tai Lung, and Duo gaped as the boy fitted the cuffs to the horse's wrists.

Quon smirked and, reaching inside his tunic, the youth took out—to their great astonishment—an Imperial badge!

"That's correct, gentlemen," he answered. Suddenly his clear, youthful voice had deepened a little, and the smile on his face bore little semblance of innocence that had previously been displayed. "I am Lieutenant Hu Quon of the Imperial Special Forces."

Po pointed, "But you're just a kid!"

"How old do I _look_?" Quon asked, looking slightly insulted.

"Sixteen, seventeen…if that," Tai Lung said warily.

"He's gotta be old enough to be in the Special Forces…" Duo said, "which means you're at least twenty-two."

"Twenty-one, actually—I graduated early." The tiger grabbed hold of Zang's shackles and yanked hard. "And we've been after this guy for a while."

"Who's 'we'?" Po asked.

"The Imperial Special Forces, Undercover Division," Wu Zhu answered. "And Lieutenant Hu wasn't the only one. We were too, obviously."

Quon interjected before the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior could interrupt, "We were briefed on this man last year, and I was authorized to join his troop as an undercover operative; the consequence of my looking years younger than I actually am helped the ruse significantly. Captain Altai was assigned to security duties if Tai Lung had ever left the Valley, which you did. And the Wu Sisters agreed to a covert mission to mark your progress; only lately have they joined Asmodei Koshchei's forces, providing some valuable information." Quon made sure the chains were good and tight before turning back to the warriors. "We've been following up on reports of defectors and imposters in the Imperial Army, and this one was by far the most suspicious case."

"So let me see if I have this right," Po said, turning to Altai, "You're an undercover agent?"

"And I wasn't the only one," the rhino said.

"Of course you weren't!" Duo griped. "Are you telling me I've been surrounded by _cops_ this whole time?" He pointed at Wu Jiang, who actually looked a little guilty. "_You_ have been a cop this whole time?

Altai silenced the wolf with a glare. Addressing the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior, he explained, "There's been a lot of us keeping an eye on you two. Some of us from the army, though we had a couple free agents. The Wu Sisters are actually our best operatives."

No one but Wu Jiang noticed the look of betrayal on Duo's face.

"They volunteered for this mission," Quon explained. "They've been operating as sleeper agents for our armed forces for _years. _But if their intelligence is right, there's no more time to explain everything. You two need to get to the village to stop Asmodei Koshchei; we'll finish up here."

Tai Lung turned to Altai. The rhino frowned at the snow leopard's look of betrayal, then said, "Go—I promise I'll give you a full explanation later."

Duo didn't waste another moment. He stormed towards the door.

Jiang tried to stop him. "Duo, listen..."

"Save it," he snapped. "If you're such a damn good spy, tell me where Lang is."

Jiang sighed. "He's probably with Koshchei, near the city center. They're planning to assassinate Jiao Dalang's entire family. Here's the address," she handed him a folded piece of paper.

Duo glanced at it, the paused. "This is Ping's Noodles."

"Formerly. Now the Long and Feng Cafe. How do you know it?"

"I left a lousy tip there, once." He quickly pocketed the paper and ran out the hall.

"Let him go, Jiang," Altai ordered. "He's got a job to do, and so do you."

Po handed Sun Bear's staff to Tai Lung, "And so do we," the panda said. "You guys coming?"

"We'll join the battle once he's detained," Quon said, nudging Zang with his foot. "You go on ahead, we'll follow."

"There's a storeroom below the barracks," Tai Lung said. "It's where they held me before I was carted off to prison. If it held me, it should hold him."

Altai nodded, signalled his people to move out, and between them, they carried off a struggling war horse.

Po and Tai Lung were now alone in the silent hall.

Which, naturally, didn't stay silent for very long.

"I really thought you were going to kill him," Po said.

"I wanted to," the snow leopard admitted. "But that meant that everyone would've been right about me. I am not a monster, not anymore. That's in the past." He turned his attention back to the dragon on the ceiling. Po followed his gaze.

"You hear that?" Tai Lung shouted at the statue. "To _hell_ with you! To hell with expectations! I'm not going to fit your mold, and I will _not_ be your pawn! And if you have such a problem with that, then you can come down from that ceiling and strike me down—"

They both jumped in alarm when the Dragon's eyes suddenly glowed, casting white-blue light down onto the pair as the serpent's jaws began to clench and flex with the fearsome roar rising from its throat-

"-or you could just stay up there, too, and we could talk..." Tai Lung finished with an uneasy grin.

But he was too late; the Dragon had awoken.

Cracks appeared in the ceiling tiles as the massive golden body surged to life, sending plaster and bits of stone tumbling to the floor. One claw ripped from the stone, then another. The beast's massive head yanked away and let out a fearsome roar, finally and sinuously pulling away from the ceiling and curling down to the floor in front of the snow leopard.

The Dragon stood on his forepaws, rearing his head back and glaring down his snout, appraising the spotted feline with a knowing look. It was only then that Tai Lung remembered...that Dragon had probably watched over him as he grew up. He knew what awful things he had done. And he was going to make him pay for it.

Tai Lung tensed and waited for the Dragon to strike him dead. The Dragon reared back further, like a snake about to strike, and then his head lunged forward.

Only to collide with Po's fist.

The Dragon wheeled back, shaking his mighty head and roaring more from surprise than pain. He drew back and saw the bi-color warrior standing firm in front of the snow leopard, a look of utmost anger on his round face.

"Over my dead body," Po growled. "God or no god, you want Tai, you go through me first. And I don't go down easy."

The Dragon stiffened, then advanced on the panda. Po stood firm, bunching his hands into fists, waiting for the beast to give him a reason to fight back. The Dragon got right in Po's face, mere inches from his snout, and from deep within his long serpentine throat, the Dragon spoke.

"_You know not the sins of that monster you protect."_

"And you don't know his virtues," Po said. "You've only known him since before he was imprisoned. I've known him since then, and seen what he's done."

"_As have I,"_ the Dragon intoned. _"And there is great darkness in him."_

"Well duh."

The Dragon blinked.

"Of _course_ he has darkness in him. I mean, _hello_, we all have darkness inside us, even me. Yet you chose me. _Oogway_ chose me, to be his successor. Yeah, I know about that. Sun Bear told me...Sun Bear, the late Phoenix Warrior, remember him? And while we're on the subject, this guy?" Po thumbed over his shoulder at Tai Lung, who was sending worried looks between the dragon and the panda. "This guy, Tai Lung, the guy you were about to...well, I don't wanna think what you were gonna do to him, but he's the new Phoenix Warrior. He's got the Phoenix Scroll, knows it's secret and everything."

Po paused then hissed over his shoulder, "You got the secret of the scroll, right?"

"Y-yes, back at the guard cabin," Tai Lung said weakly. "Healed Duo with it."

"Oh, cool!"

"Erm, Po? Dragon?" the snow leopard reminded him.

"Oh yeah, right, right...Anyway, back on-topic," he planted his feet firmly on the floor then lowered himself into his strongest fighting stance, staring down a dragon that was nearly fifty feet long, with claws a good seven inches, and scales of gold that shone like tiny suns. And the teeth, Po could hardly miss the teeth. "You are not hurting Tai Lung. _No one_ hurts Tai Lung. Not while I'm around."

The Dragon stared at him, then raised his head high. _"You would die for him?"_

"Yes," Po said soberly, without hesitation.

He likewise did not hesitate to punch the dragon again.

Tai Lung's jaw dropped as the Dragon doubled back from the force of the blow, shook his mighty head, and stared in astonishment at the panda, who had settled into a low stance to ward him off.

"'Course, dyin' ain't exactly my first plan," the panda bravely said.

The Dragon growled deep in his throat, and both warriors swore that the beast would kill them both for Po's bravado...until the beast sat back on his haunches and slowly smiled.

"_Well_," he said, _"It is fitting, that the new Dragon Warrior should stand here before me and do the same exact thing his predecessor did over nine hundred years ago."_

"_Oogway_ attacked _you_?" Tai Lung asked. He couldn't help himself; the idea of the peaceful tortoise daring to take on something as powerful as a dragon was...frankly, out of character.

"_He did..."_ the Dragon answered, _"In favor of the Phoenix Warrior, the one you call Sun Bear."_

"That's...not entirely surprising," the snow leopard admitted.

"_It remains to be seen,"_ the Dragon continued, _"whether or not you live up to your vow. The great evil before you must be destroyed. I will leave you – both of you – with one word of advice: decide now, before you leave this hallowed hall, what part you play in the grand story...are you villain...or are you hero?"_

Then before their eyes, the Dragon quickly faded away into nothingness. They were alone in the hall. The only evidence of their encounter was the missing statue from the ceiling.

"Hero," Po said.

"What?" Tai Lung asked.

The panda turned to look at him. "He asked us to decide what we were – and we're heroes. Don't say that you're not. You think a villain would have done all the great stuff you've done?"

"Everyone keeps saying that to defeat a monster, I have to become a monster."

"You defeated Zang, and you're still not a monster."

Tai Lung thought about it, but his thoughts were interrupted at the sound of fireworks going off below. Grasping the bamboo staff, he shared a single look with Po before both ran for the double doors to join their allies below.

* * *

Asmodei Koshchei was having a time finding his destination; pesky villagers kept getting in his way, slowing him down. The few outlaws he counted amongst his advance guard had been held back a few blocks ago and were fighting their way back to him. His claws were stained with their blood nearly up to his elbows, and he was getting tired of dealing with them. Lang was useless, the youth holding a spear and doing little else to help. He made very little effort, wounding a few here and there, impassively stepping over bodies. Koshchei made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat; the boy wasn't even bothering with mortal wounds!

Lang kicked one rabbit out of the way, and Koshchei lost his temper, turning abruptly and slapping the wolf. "Enough! You either kill or I kill you!"

Lang stared back at him a moment then straightened. The wolf opened his arms, exposing his thin chest. "So what're you waiting for?"

Koshchei raised his claw to bring down on the boy. Lang closed his eyes to accept his fate.

Then something hit Koshchei hard from behind, sending him sprawling in the snow. It felt like a boulder had been slammed into him.

When Koshchei struggled back to his feet, he was, for once, completely surprised. He hadn't been this shocked since he discovered Dalang was still alive. But he wasn't the only one surprised. Lang still stood with open arms, thinking that surely he was hallucinating. But no. Standing in front of them, wielding a marvellous golden spear, was Lan Duo, looking like he had dragged himself back up through every level of Hell...just to fight Koshchei.

Duo drew his lips back into a snarl to reveal his fangs that flashed white against the snow. "Round two, asshole."

Koschei wasn't ready for the onslaught. Duo caught him twice with the spear shaft, then once in the gut with the spear butt. The leopard fell onto his back, for once looking like a pathetic old man.

Duo knew better now.

He glared down at the leopard, standing motionless, waiting, his unraveling bandages flapping in the wind.

Koshchei waited as well until he could no longer allow himself to fake it. He growled at the advance guard that had finally caught up with him, "Kill him."

The others hesitated, noting that Duo looked ready to kill each and every last one of them. Then two advanced. Duo stabbed one, ripped the golden spear from his victim's torso, spun on his heel and shoved the spear through the second one behind his back. His footing was as sure as any swordsman.

Another wolf he didn't know advanced with a spear of his own. Duo blocked him with the golden shaft, hitting him with the spear butt in several places. He hit the knee, and the other wolf buckled, giving Duo a chance to sink the spear tip into him.

Duo quickly dodged a spear thrown at him, grabbing the dead wolf's weapon and throwing it right back at his attacker. The spear that he had just dodged had lodged into the dirt next to his foot. He kicked out to the side, uprooting the weapon, spun it in his hand, and thrust it backwards into the gut of a boar that had snuck up behind him.

His blazing eyes rarely left the Amur leopard. And Koshchei was for once actually frightened.

"Haow?" he asked. "Haow did you survive?"

"Uh-uh," Duo said. "Trade secret. Lang's coming with me. You don't have any hold over him anymore. You're finished."

The leopard laughed contemptuously. "Is that vhat you think? Vhat say you, _malchik_?"

Lang wasn't even looking at the leopard. His eyes were right on Duo. The youth's jaw moved, but his words failed until he finally choked out, "Did you come back for me?"

"You're damn right I did," Duo said with a small smile. "We're a pack, aren't we?"

After a moment, Lang finally smiled, and light finally returned to his eyes. Relief flooded his features and he sighed. "Yeah...yeah, we are."

"Oh this is such bull shit."

The two wolves and leopard looked down the alley and spied Zi Hao, the black wolf glaring at them. "I didn't think you could make me anymore sick than you already have, Lan Duo, but I stand corrected. You think that little shit cares about you?"

"Yeah, I do," Duo said, eyes flicking back and forth between Koshchei and Hao. Duo was not in a place he wanted to be, between two monsters, and protecting a kid. _You trained him_, he reminded himself, _he can hold his own_.

Or could he?

"So you don't know?" Hao spit on the ground, narrowly missing Lang's feet. "This little prick's been playing us this whole time. He's been planning to kill us all off."

"That's not true!" Lang protested.

"Then you planned to kill _me_ off, and that's enough for me."

"Well duh," Duo said, rolling his eyes. "What d'ya think _I've_ been trying to do?"

This took Zi Hao off-guard. "...What?"

Duo made his move, shouting an order at Lang, he couldn't remember what, and he went after Koshchei again. Lang grabbed a discarded spear and advanced on a stunned Zi Hao, who realized too late that he had bitten off too much. Lang was better trained than he expected...which meant Lan Duo was a better teacher than he feared.

Koshchei, meanwhile, was scrambling to get away. His chest started to hurt, but he ignored it in favor of surviving Duo's onslaught. Duo jabbed the spear at the leopard, who only, through some miracle, managed to avoid them. Duo twirled the spear in his hands, bringing the shaft down on the leopard. Koshchei brought his arm up to block the strike, and felt the impact vibrate through his old bones.

Hao wasn't having an easier time. His sword wasn't making any headway in defeating Lang, who was suddenly angry enough to cut right to the chase...and cut out the black wolf's heart. What the youth lacked in upper body strength, he made up for with speed and agility. He ducked and dodged with an ease and skill seen only in warriors far older than he was. And the kid was a damn sight better with a spear than Hao had ever been.

Lang jabbed the spear point in the ground, hoisted himself up and slammed both feet into Hao's chest. The black wolf fell back several paces, managing to stay on his feet. Lang ripped the spear from the ground and stabbed at his opponent several times, Hao only managing to block at just the last minute.

Meanwhile, the spear aimed at Koshchei ripped through his clothes, slicing off the tips of hairs. Duo was in a world of his own, with only a singular goal. Koshchei had fought men like this before, men who had nothing to lose, and didn't fear death. The leopard had fancied himself one of those men. But in his old age – and especially right now – he was beginning to fear death. Because it looked like it would really, really hurt.

But Duo was too focused on his goal, that he didn't see that Zi Hao had changed tactics, and Lang was now on the defensive. As much as Lang had learned, he was still no match for the brute force and savagery from the black wolf. The wolf youth had just about enough, though he couldn't get in a clear hit, no matter how hard he tried. Hao was too strong, repelling each of his strikes; Lang was going to need help.

Movement above him and behind Hao caught his eye, and when Lang glanced up for a moment, he saw Wu Jiang on the rooftop, staring at the fight below with horror.

And Lang saw why.

Duo's back was turned.

And Zi Hao took his chance, and lunged forward.

Duo knocked Koshchei down and turned just in time to feel the force of the strike in his core...

...as Lang's body slumped into his, the sword protruding from his back.

Duo felt breathless, staring down into Lang's wide eyes, the youth clinging to his arms as he felt his body get heavier. He coughed, some blood showing at the corners of his lips.

"No...oh gods, no! Lang!"

Lang's body jerked as Zi Hao savagely ripped the sword out of the boy's back. Duo grabbed hold of his protege, staring in horror at the black wolf, who was wiping off the blade on the snow. He shrugged, "He had it coming. He would have turned on you too, one day, I did you a fa—"

Hao never finished his prediction. He fell backwards, propped up by the Golden Spear that had been thrown right through his body.

Duo glanced over his shoulder; Koshchei was gone. _Fuck him_, he thought, _he doesn't matter._

He knelt, gently laying Lang down on the cobblestone street. He pressed his palms down on the open wound, trying to stop the blood from gushing out.

_Don't bother_, the rational part of his brain told him, _a wound like that, he won't make it, you know that._

_No, not when I'm so close...not when we were so close!_

"C'mon, l'il buddy, stay with me. Hey? C'mon, just a scratch, right? We got plans, you and me, we got plans. Start a pack of our own, a pack of outcasts, just like us. A pack of omegas...Lang, talk to me."

The young wolf coughed up more blood, drops running down his chin. "Duo...I'm sorry..."

"Don't be like that, it's okay; I forgive you. I should've been there for you, I should've protected you. C'mon, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and you're _stronger_ than this, you can beat this."

Lang raised a shaking hand and wrapped it around one of Duo's hands on his stomach. Duo stopped talking, stopped rationalizing, stopped trying to deny the inevitable. Lang looked pale, too pale, and he wouldn't stop bleeding. Duo started shaking his head, utter devastation on his face.

"Lang..."

"I'm sorry...I should've been a better friend." He was crying now; he knew he wouldn't be long, now.

Looking right into Lang's ashen face, Duo felt the blood draining from his head, and his heart thudding in his chest, his throat tightening. When he spoke, his voice broke. "Friend, nothin'. We could've been brothers...we _are_ brothers. _Lang_..."

"But you said...you'd rather be dead..."

"I was wrong, I was angry, and I'm sorry, I should never have said that. Lang, _please_..."

Duo felt a hand on his shoulder, and knew by instinct that it wa Jiang. She knelt next to them in the snow, placing a cool hand on Lang's forehead.

Lang managed a smile. He gripped Duo's hand tighter. "Brothers?"

Duo gripped his hand like a vice. "Brothers," he whispered.

Lang, still smiling, closed his eyes.

His grip on Duo's hand slackened.

Duo heard Jiang gasp softly, but it barely registered. He reached a bloodied hand up and smoothed some of the fur around Lang's face. He sat still for a moment, staring into the young, peaceful face, then felt his whole body break. He grabbed the youth's body in his arms and held him as he cried for the first time since he was a child.

Jiang kept her respectful silence, wrapping her arms around Duo's quaking shoulders.

"Are the Dragon and Phoenix Warrior going after Koschei?" Duo asked suddenly.

Shocked by his tone, Jiang nodded. "Yes, they've gone after him."

"Will they kill him?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"If they don't, he's mine."

"I know."

After a pause, he said, "I can't leave him, not like this."

"He'll understand. I'll stay with him if you want."

Duo paused and nodded after a thoughtful moment. "Okay." He gently laid Lang back down on the ground, crossing the younger wolf's arms over his chest. He glanced at her. "About what I said earlier..."

"Don't," Jiang said. "Just kill the bastard, if they haven't already."

* * *

Across town, Su Lin was having a hard time getting the menfolk to listen to her. Of all the times for mysoginy to rear its ugly head, it was when she was leading a group of them to defend their home. She wondered if Sonam knew he had given her command over a group of men who apparently hated women... _Bastards_, she thought. And thanks to their griping at being led by a woman, they had been easily ambushed. Surrounded on all sides, it didn't look good.

She was low on explosives, out of signal flares, and smoke screens were down to her last two.

"I need everyone to fall back, let them hit first. If you see an opening, take it! Break through their ranks and establish a perimeter and hold the line!

"Why should we take orders from you?" a pig said with contempt.

Suddenly enraged, Su Lin jabbed her elbow back and hit the solar plexus of the ox that had snuck up behind her, then brought her fist up to break his nose, then grabbed the front of his tunic and threw him with a hefty grunt over her shoulder and into the nearest wall. This happened in a mere fraction of a second, so when Su Lin turned back to glare at the pig, and snapped, "Why should you listen to me? Because as a healer I can fix you, but I can just as easily break you, _that's_ why!"

He responded the only way that could be expected. "Okay...what she said. Establish a perimeter and...stuff."

_I think I'm getting the hang of this assertiveness thing_, she thought with satisfaction.

"Su Lin!"

She looked up at the rooftop and smiled as she saw Sonam's familiar form. He jumped down and took out a couple bandits before reaching her side. "I've opened a window for you, take your men and get out!"

"What about you?" she asked.

"I can hold my own, love, get going!"

She nodded and ordered her group to retreat, moving back into the interior of the village.

Sonam ducked a swing from a hapless fox; he knocked him down and yanked the spear out of the vulpine's hands. He snapped the spear shaft easily on his thigh and used the two pieces to stab another two enemies.

"Bring it on, lads! I was killing and fighting long before you were walking!"

"I'm a lady!" cried the one female in the group.

"Then you'll be pleased to know I'm an equal opportunity assassin. Come on, then, are you lot too frightened to face Tai Lung's father?"

The ones advancing stopped immediately.

"Tai Lung's your son?" one of them asked.

"Ayup," Sonam said, ripping off the mask to show them the eerie similarities between father and son. The snow leopard grinned wickedly. "So...who's first?"

They fled.

Sonam scowled. "Damn. Was looking forward to that..."

"Let me oblige you, old man!" someone hissed at him.

Sonam felt someone hit him from behind, right between the shoulder blades. He cursed himself. How could he neglect to check behind him? He turned onto his back and saw a thin crocodile standing over him, a spear point right at the feline's throat.

_So this is it, is it?_ he thought._ Fine then, I had a good run_. He closed his eye and waited. He waited for the croc to strike him dead. He waited a little longer. Then he opened his eye and saw that another croc had knocked him down.

"The hell?" he asked.

His savior responded with a wink in an accent he couldn't identify, "Master Croc, at your service."

Sonam stared at him. "..._Masters Council_ Master Croc, you mean?"

"The same. Friend of yours said you needed help."

"I'm guessing Shifu?" the snow leopard asked wryly.

"You guess right," the reptile said with a wink.

Sonam gladly accepted the outstretched claw from Master Croc. "So where's Master Ox? And the other masters?"

The bovine in question hailed him. "Right here. You must be Sonam. Shifu spoke highly of you."

"And now we know why," Master Croc said appreciatively. "You can hold your own...for an old guy."

"We came as soon as we could. Where are we needed?" Ox asked before Sonam could fire back.

Sonam ignored Master Croc's comment – for now – and pointed down the street. "We've blocked them off at the canal, but they're moving around. We need to establish a perimeter near the city center, push them back a few blocks. Villagers holding their own, but we're in desperate need of back-up."

Master Ox hefted up a mighty warhammer and snorted. "On it. The others are on their way. Get your people and pull back, we'll take care of the rest."

Sonam nodded once and shouted orders to the villagers to retreat to the interior.

* * *

Dalang ran helter skelter through the streets towards the restaurant. How could he have been so stupid? He knew Koshchei better than anyone else did, he should have foreseen this.

He skidded to a halt and turned into the restaurant. There were knives sticking up from the floor. Good, the trap worked, he sighed with relief. Now where is everybody?

He tiptoed into the kitchen, and froze in horror to see Mr. Ping lying on the floor. Forgetting himself, Dalang fell to his knees and felt for the goose's pulse. To his immense relief, the goose opened his eyes.

"Someone came in here," Mr. Ping whispered. "He went upstairs."

"Leopard?" Dalang asked.

Mr. Ping nodded. "He hit me, I stayed down. There was a child here, but he's hidden in the cabinet here." To prove it, the goose cracked open a cabinet to reveal a tiny red panda, staring frightfully at the large tiger.

Dalang offered the child a smile as he sighed with relief. "Ping, that's the smartest thing you could have done. Stay down here."

Ping held his head, likely where Koshchei had hit him. The goose was lucky that he was still alive, and Dalang knew it. But why had Koshchei not made sure he was dead?

_Because what he wants to do, he wants to do it quickly,_ he thought.

Dalang quickly ascended the stairs, swords sheathed, but at the ready in case he needed them. But he allowed himself one thing that Shifu had forbade: he unsheathed his claws. If Koshchei were waiting for him at the top of the stairs, he was going to be prepared.

Dalang poked his head up and around the corner. The common room was empty. He stood still a moment and thought he heard movement from the other side of the house. It was either Koshchei or Mei Xing, and he stepped out to move over there...

Then he felt the breeze.

He stopped short. The frigid draft was coming from his room. He bounded in there immediately, knowing that neither he nor Tigress had left a window open.

He stepped in the door and stopped again, his heart leaping up into his throat.

"_It's been a while, hasn't it?"_

Dalang froze when he heard the voice speaking in Russian. He was amazed how quickly it came back to him, but what amazed – and horrified – him most was to see Asmodei Koshchei standing in his bedroom, with Baby Shang in his arms. Shang kept trying to bite the leopard, but settled for crying when the leopard tightened his grip on the infant.

"_Your quarrel's with me, Asmodei, put my son back in his crib. Alive. In one piece." _Experience told Dalang to be as specific as possible when dealing with this madman. _"We can settle this the way we should have,"_ Dalang responded in Russian. _"The way we should have thirteen years ago."_

Koshchei appeared to think about this for a moment, then smiled cruelly. _"That is what I thought I wanted, but no. No, you humiliated me. I had a reputation, you know..."_

"_Oh, I know_," Dalang said through gritted teeth. "_You hated to leave any work unfinished. But I was never one of your targets._"

"_Oh, but you were. Did you never wonder why I chose you?_"

"_I assume to get back at my father for some slight or another. Or, knowing you, it could've just been for shits and giggles_."

"_Little bit of A, little bit of B_," the leopard acknowledged. "_Fact is, I truly wanted a protege, but that was not to be. I have been wondering how to get back at you, after all these years_."

"_You intended to kill me, didn't you?_"

"_Hmm? Oh, the thought crossed my mind, many times. At last minute, I decided to let you live, have someone carry on my work. But you hurt me. You hurt me very deeply. It was better for me to think you were dead. Now that I know you escaped the Demon of the North, no, death is too good for you. I have pondered and puzzled what could be a fate worse than death for a man like you..._" Koshchei suddenly grinned wickedly and drew out his claws, positioning them right at Shang's neck.

Dalang instinctively moved forward; his sword got to Asmodei's throat before the leopard could kill the baby. Koshchei wagered that his reflexes had slowed as he gained on in years, but he truly had not expected Dalang to do this. The tiger's blade was right at his throat, and there certainly was a very real danger that if the leopard so much as exhaled, his former student would kill him.

"Put. Him. In. His. Crib. _Now_," Dalang hissed.

Wordlessly, Koshchei obeyed. He had only been on the receiving end of a Jiao temper like this once, and he would never forget it. It was the only time Shen had been so furious at him that Koshchei actually feared for his life. This second time facing a Jiao temper...he was beginning to feel that old fear creeping back up.

Once Shang was safely back in his crib, Koschei backed off and held his hands in the air so Dalang could see them. "Am unarmed."

"Bull shit" was the answer he got.

The old leopard smirked and drew his claws.

Then Mei Xing's agonized scream made him freeze.

Dalang had also frozen in place, his face paling.

Koshchei eyed the open door just as quickly as Dalang did.

The leopard made a move.

He was cut off by Dalang's sword blocking his path. The tiger blocked his way with his body, swinging both swords at his former mentor. He made a few hits, drawing cuts across the leopard's face. Koshchei swiped his claws at the tiger, ripping at the fabric but coming far too close to drawing blood for Dalang's liking. With an expert flick of his wrist, he held one sword up in front of him as the other one came around in a quick but graceful arc. Koshchei only barely dodged it, then tripped over the tiger's outstretched foot, slamming against the bed.

Not to be deterred, Koshchei pushed himself up and back-flipped over the bed to the other side, the furniture the only thing between him and two deadly blades. Dalang growled, "Okay, there is no way in hell you're still able to do that."

"I haff many surprises."

"Yeah, but I bet that old war wound's hurtin' like a bitch, ain't it?" Dalang smugly asked.

Koschei snarled and threw a pitcher from the wash basin at his opponent. Dalang deftly caught it and swung it back at him. Koshchei dodged and the pitcher shattered against the wall, showering the spotted feline with freezing cold water. Koshchei shook it off and charged. Dalang twisted his body so that the blades faced away from him, but that the tiger's elbow jabbed first into the leopard's gut, then the forearm into his throat.

Koshchei staggered back and hit the windowsill, grasping at his throat and making a gurgling noise. He had done that same move too many times to count. He wouldn't be able to call for help, even if he wanted to. But he certainly needed it. Dalang was a lot stronger than he remembered, _Or am I just getting older?_

Dalang stood his ground, down in a battle stance, ready to attack. Koshchei wondered why he didn't just finish him off; he had the upper hand, after all.

"I'm not finishing this," Dalang said, as if he knew exactly what he had been thinking, "Not yet. Not until you listen. You were wrong. I am _nothing_ like you. I will _never_ be anything like you. For example, you always kicked a guy when he was down. You're incapacitated, I can easily kill you right now and be done with it. But I'm not going to."

_Idiot_, Koshchei thought. He could feel his throat opening up a bit, and he sucked in gulps of air. His lungs burned. Was he dying? He had never felt this awful during a fight before. He usually had much better stamina than this. He would not give up, no, not yet. He would, instead, take Dalang's act of mercy and use it against him. Lure him into a false sense of security. Lure him in, closer and closer...and kill the son of a bitch right in front of his son. Then, he would kill the son. End that damnable line forever.

Koschei leaned back against the open window, snow falling onto the sill, a chill wind at his back. He may have imagined it, but one blast of wind seemed to cut right past him and under the eave. Dalang leveled his sword right at the leopard's neck. "Whenever you're ready, Azzie."

Well _someone_ had a pair...he actually thought he had a chance of winning! _And look at him, smirking like that...like he's already won._

He smirked, "You haff much fight in you, yet. I like that."

Claws dug into his shoulders from behind and a voice hissed in his ear: "Then you're going to _love_ me."

And suddenly Koshchei was roughly yanked right out the window and landed hard on his back on top of a table in the courtyard. The table splintered beneath him, and he was once again robbed of breath. The next thing he was aware of was a striped fist colliding with his face. Suddenly he was up and standing, taking more hits in these few moments than he had felt in the last twenty years of his life.

When the hand wrapped around his throat and bodily slammed him into the nearest wall, he came face-to-face with Master Tigress.

And holy hell, was she pissed.

Then, most perplexingly, she let go of his neck and stood back, dropping low into a battle stance, fists and claws at the ready.

Koshchei remembered how Shen's wife glared at him. He was never intimidated. He remembered how Shen glared at him after the leopard had tortured Xiang. He wasn't intimidated then, either, though he should have been. So it said something that Master Tigress's look told the leopard he had made a terrible and perhaps deadly error.

Tigress stood her ground, calm like a goddess of mercy, but with a heat in her eyes like a goddess of Hell. She perplexed him, she never took her eyes off him, those flashing, dangerous ruby eyes, and she slowly began to circle him. He never took his eyes off her, even though his stomach and chest hurt, and he could feel the blood dripping down his clothes.

"Use claws," he coughed, "is not honorable vay to fight."

"Who said this was an honorable battle, or that you were an honorable opponent?" she replied, with a coolness that put Shen's to shame. Then she took three bold steps right up to him and, unlike Shen who had only backhanded him once, Tigress drew back her hand and slapped him, drawing her claws deep through his skin. Koshchei yowled and turned away from her, pressing his hand to his now torn up and bloodied face.

"Maybe you never got the message," Tigress icily said, scarcely above a whisper, "_No one _hurts my baby, or my husband, and expects to walk away in one piece."

"You vill kill me, then?"

Tigress pursed her lips. "No. I think I'll play with my prey before I kill it."

* * *

Upstairs, Dalang and little Shang peered out the window at the battling felines below. Dalang covered Shang's eyes with his hand to shield him from the worst of the carnage. "Well, she seems to have it covered, doesn't she?"

"Baba."

Dalang froze, then looked at his son. Shang returned his look with wide green eyes, and said it again. "Baba!"

He reacted the only way a father could: with absolute elation. "Your first word...Shang, your _first_ word!" he grinned. "You just said—!"

The splintering wood below snapped him out of it, and when he thought about it, he froze and said, "...Your mother is going to _kill_ me."

"What the hell is going on out there?" Wu demanded.

Dalang looked back at her, Shang in his arms, both tigers bearing matching perplexed looks. He hissed in his son's ear, "We will not speak of this." Then he answered Wu: "Honestly?" Dalang said. "Asmodei Koshchei was just in here."

"_WHAT_?"

"But it's okay, Tigress is taking care of it."

He paused to listen for the telltale sounds of shattering wood and agonized screams, and Koshchei's loud Russian swearing.

Wu stared at him, then out the window below, then retreated back to the room where Mei Xing was giving birth. "Well, that's that then, we'll leave her to it."

"Even though I'm supposed to be the one to kill him! I'm feeling a little cheated," Dalang said.

"Oh are you? Are you really going to come between her and her quarry when she's this mad?"

Dalang's nerve failed him. His expression said that much.

"Get in here," Wu ordered, "I need you to keep an eye on Mei for a moment. Where's Ping?"

"He's safe, he got hit and played dead. He's just got a bump on the head, but I think he'll be fine."

"Thank goodness for that!"

"So, what do you need me for?" he asked as he entered the birthing room. Wu pointed to the bed where a pale Mei Xing was laboring, gripping the sheets beneath her and gritting her teeth through another contraction.

"I need you to hold her hand."

His answer was immediate: "No way in hell. I learned my lesson from when Tigress was in labor with Shang."

"I'm not as strong as your wife," Mei Xing snapped, "So stop being a whiny bitch and get your ass over here!"

The tiger muttered as he sat Shang on the rug, "I'm not the one who's a..."

"You finish that statement and I'm ripping out your spleen!"

"Yes'm."

* * *

Koshchei had to hand it to Master Tigress: Shen probably would have been proud to call her his daughter-in-law. She posessed a strength and ferocity that put the old Jiao patriarch to shame. And for the leopard to admit that said something about how badly he was getting his ass kicked.

Tigress wasn't holding back either, and had no intention to. Crane's words echoed in her head, and now, finally, she was being the mother tigress she was. The only thing she felt bad about was breaking some of Mr. Ping's furniture.

She dodged a swing that the leopard managed to get in, and took some steps back as he tried to fight back. He was getting angry; good. The informant had warned her that when Koshchei got angry, he got sloppy.

She had no reason to doubt that intelligence until Koshchei managed to drag his claws over her face, just as she had done to him. He hit her again with a punch that shocked her with its intensity. Y_ou wouldn't think someone so old could hit that hard_, she thought, _even accounting for Shifu!_

Stunned by the severity, she barely had time to duck as his claws raked through the air, intending to rip out her throat. He was fighting dirty, fighting desperately, and he was scared. She could see it in his blue-green eyes, he was scared. And that worried her. Because nothing is quite as dangerous as a predator that is cornered and scared.

She took a chance and aimed a punch at his stomach. She realized too late that she had fallen into his trap, because as she lunged to make contact, his claw came around in a swooping arch and wrapped tightly around her throat.

Tigress's claw dug into his arm as he tightened his grip. He was strong! Why couldn't she break this hold? She had been trained for this! But the tighter he squeezed, the whoozier she got, and her head swam as it was deprived of oxygen.

Still clutching Tigress in his fist, Koshchei snarled and squeezed tighter around the her throat. Tigress clawed at the leopard's hands, shaking and gasping for air, her eyes trained up on the upraised claw to be brought down on her head—

And it was then that Koshchei hesitated, an uncertain look across his features, then turned to look over his shoulder at the sudden din behind him. His grip relaxed enough to allow Tigress to suck down gulps of air, and loosened further when two loud voices proclaimed over the roar of firecrackers and furious flames.

"Well look what we have here!" a voice boomed exultantly. Koshchei whirled around to stare at Tigress's rescuers…and gaped when the forms of a panda and snow leopard emerged from the street. The panda swaggered into the restaurant, smugly grinning, "Looks like we got here right in the nick of time. What would that make us, Tai Lung?"

"Big Damn Heroes, Po," replied a triumphant Tai Lung.

"Ain't we just?"

The Warriors were back!

And Tigress, not to be outdone, took this opportunity and brought her arm back, and punched the leopard right through the wall and into the street. As she shakily stood up, rubbing her throat and coughing, she cracked her neck and said to them, "I know it's not honorable to hit an old man, but on occasion it _is_ rather satisfying."

"We won't hold this one against you," Tai Lung assured her.

"I appreciate it."

There was a long pause.

"You're not going to let me finish him off, are you?" she asked them.

Po looked contrite. "Sorry."

"No, it's fine. My baby's safe, Dalang is safe, I should see to the villagers."

"They got reinforcements," Po said. "The entire Master's Council joined the fight, they're finally pushing them back out to the outskirts of town. We saw it on the way down."

Tigress groaned. "The Master's Dinner! I completely forgot about that!"

"Worked out in our favor, though," Tai Lung said. He whipped his head around to see Koshchei struggling to his feet. The snow leopard grabbed her arm and instructed, "Down by the river, they need help there. We saw Crane and his mother on the way down, he said the others would hold them off until you got there. Are you all right to fight?"

Tigress ripped her arm out of his grasp and started to run towards the river. "Never better. Just kill that son of a bitch."

After she was out of earshot, Tai Lung muttered, "Little ray of sunshine, isn't she?"

Po looked across the street and frowned to see Koshchei fully standing and glaring at them. Panda and snow leopard left the confines of the restaurant and approached their opponent, sharing a few telepathic words.

Po asked,_ So how do we take him out? I don't think the Wuxi Finger Hold will work again..._

Tai Lung replied,_ I've got that part covered. You keep him distracted._

_Okay, how?_

_How should I know? You're the Dragon Warrior now. Try getting inside his head!_

_I'm...not really sure I want to._

_Five minutes, Po. I just need him to get as distracted as possible before I make a move._

Po wracked his brain, trying to think of what to do. Koshchei now stood between them, the two kung fu warriors circling him, boxing him in, making sure he couldn't run.

"You're standing your ground," Po said as he slowly circled the Amur leopard. "So you don't think I'm a threat—which I'm not. I'm a big fat panda, after all—pandas are too cute to be dangerous, am I right?"

Koshchei's ear twitched, then he furrowed his brows. Something had changed here, a paradigm shift that he had neither predicted nor seen coming. He liked challenges, yes, but surprises were another matter. "Vhat are you planning, bear?"

Po shrugged; he was bluffing, and was a horrible actor, but he thought he was handling this well. "All I'm planning is how to figure you out. I heard a lot about you while I was away, a lot of conflicting stories, and most of them were just that—stories. I don't think in the eighty years you've been alive anyone in China has ever known the truth. Or maybe someone did, and you tried to kill him yourself."

"I hide nothink," the leopard growled.

"No, you don't have any reason to. Heck, most people would admire someone like you, Aleksei."

Po hid his self-satisfaction when he heard the leopard assassin gasp and whirl around to unabashedly gape at him. _But how the heck did I know that?_ the panda wondered."Yeah, I know your real name. Aleksei Kasparov. Has a nicer ring than Asmodei Koshchei, I think. Aleksei sounds nicer; I'm surprised you hated the name so much. But maybe you would've liked it if you'd had a better childhood."

Koshchei snarled something at him in Russian, which Po took to be an alarmingly appalling insult, but the panda kept talking anyway.

_Seriously, how do I know this stuff? Am I really getting into his head?_

Tai Lung's voice sounded in his head, _It doesn't matter, just keep his attention on you. You're doing great, keep at it!_

Po continued, surprised to find that the intimate details of Asmodei's life were playing out before his eyes. _Was it like this for Oogway?_ "You never had any older brothers. _You_ were the oldest, but you were the runt of the family, so your siblings made fun of you, must've said things like 'we hope you don't survive the winter' and things like that. Even your own mom thought feeding you was wasteful. That must've hurt, huh?"

"Shut up," the leopard hissed.

"You got tired of being picked on all the time, so you eliminated the problem. You killed all your siblings, but made each one look like an accident. Your parents never knew. Your mom suspected, because most mothers know better. You cut out her tongue to keep her quiet. But by that time, your dad knew; you killed him so he wouldn't turn you in."

"Who cares?" Koshchei sniffed. "Is no loss. Never did anything for me—have to do for myself, alvays!"

"And not too long after you left Siberia," Po continued. "You met Jiao Shen. He wasn't like anyone else, was he? He knew you had gifts, and that you were good at what you did. He also knew you were dangerous, so he kept you busy by letting you torture people. You still hated your family—it was the only way to get the rage out, by taking it out on other people. And I bet you admired Shen, didn't you? You admired him enough to tell him everything; he was your first and only real friend, and he kept your secrets for you, no matter what you did. He was the brother you always wanted. You liked that he was as ruthless as you were…until he got married."

"She vas veak," Koshchei snorted. "He could do better." But there was something underlying the leopard's outwardly cool composure. It was hard to tell at first, but Po started seeing signs that the Siberian assassin was a bit nettled that he knew so much about him…

"Yeah, but Ming's kids weren't weak. You knew that. You knew as soon as Shang was born that he wasn't a good target. He was, what, three when he hit you that first time, and gave you those scars on your arm? You didn't go back for seconds."

Koshchei subconsciously pressed his hand against the covered scars on his forearm. "How are you knowing this?" the leopard asked, now studying the panda very closely. "All people who know are dead."

_How _do_ I know this?_ Then the answer came to him, a simple one, but one that made the most sense:

"Hey, buddy, I'm the _Dragon Warrior_…I know a lot of things. Oogway knew a lot of things, too…some people said he could read minds." He waited for it to sink in, and saw on Koshchei's face that the leopard was very unnerved…meaning he still had plenty to hide. And he was getting nervous, his whiskers twitching, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists, his forehead perspiring, and his breathing spiking. Po could practically hear the leopard's heart thudding against his ribcage. Asmodei Koshchei was very, very nervous.

"None of Shen's kids were targets; they all took after their dad as far as size and strength went…except Dalang." He paused for effect. "You saw yourself in him. You saw a little kid whose family largely didn't care for him. You saw a way to get back at Shen for 'going weak' after marrying Dalang's mom. You _hated_ Ming Hua…because she was everything your mom wasn't."

Koshchei pressed his massive paws against his ears and shut his eyes tight. "Shut up—_shut up_, right naow!" he shrieked.

"So you took Dalang in," Po continued despite the interruption and repeated Russian curses, "and taught him everything you knew, and tried to make him just like you. But he was still too much like his mom; he had a conscience. You never did, you always thought the rules never applied to you, but they do, Aleksei, they do. And you made a very, very dumb mistake."

"Mistake?"

"Yeah, you developed a pattern. After Dalang, there was another kid you took in. He was the runt of the litter, too; his name was Rong. After five years with you, he killed himself. Then the one after that, Fei-Shi, who got caught killing those kids, kids _you_ told him to kill; and you were at his execution, weren't you, laughing at him the whole time he was hanging from the gallows? Then there's Lang…" Po stopped to face Koshchei. "You took in strays who were just like you: small, unloved, desperate for someone—_anyone_—to love them, to show them the way, to give them something they never had…and you took advantage of that. Now that I know all this about you, Aleksei, I really should pity you, but honestly…I really wanna laugh because it's so pathetic!"

Koshchei snarled and lunged for the panda. Tai Lung pounced at the same time, grabbing the old leopard from behind. The snow leopard's arm wrapped around the northerner's neck as he twisted the old one's arm behind his back. Koshchei let out an enraged roar, reached back with his free arm and grabbed Tai Lung, his claws sinking into his side.

Tai Lung gasped in pain and let go. Koshchei turned and punched him twice in the face, then drew his claws across the snow leopard's cheek. Tai Lung fell back a few paces, Po, a little help would be great!

Po grabbed onto the back of Koshchei's tunic and yanked him back. "You don't like what I said, do you?" the panda asked calmly. "Guess what? I wasn't done...does Sonya's family know what happened to her?"

The panda didn't have time to block the blow before it hit him in the chest. Po had no idea that something like that would set him off. He had hoped that fighting both Dalang and especially Tigress would have worn out the old leopard, but it looked like the angrier he got, the stronger he got. But he also got sloppy. Just like Tai Lung did.

_Tai, get him mad._

_What? He seems plenty mad already._

_He gets sloppy when he's ticked. _

_My jaw and left cheek say otherwise, mate._

Po brought up his arm to deflect Koshchei's punch. The old leopard unsheathed his claws and clawed at the air by the panda's face. The elder growled something in Russian. His blue-green eyes had a mad look in them, and that was how Po knew he was in trouble.

_Okay...he's not mad, he's insane._

_What did I just say about his being mad? _Tai Lung asked.

Po stepped back and tried to dodge the deadly claws. Tai Lung jumped to his friend's rescue, only to get a strong kick in the gut from Koshchei. Pain shot up his right side as the old leopard's foot made contact with his ribs. Tai Lung fell hard on his back, but had enough presence of mind to back-flip to avoid Koshchei's next downward strike. Koshchei's claws sank into the frozen ground mere seconds after Tai Lung's head had vacated the space.

Snarling, Koshchei advanced on the snow leopard, the elder clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Vhat, is _this_ the deadly Tai Luung? This is the one who killed one thousand men like it vas _nothingk_? You are rusty."

"Something I wouldn't dare accuse you of," the snow leopard said, carefully watching his opponent. "You're fighting two very capable warriors, and you're not even winded...I have to say, I hope I'm in such good shape when I'm your age."

"Flattery gets you novhere."

"I assure you that's not flattery; simply stating a fact. And speaking of facts—" Tai Lung grabbed Koshchei's fist in his palm, and held him at bay...barely. Koshchei appeared to be even stronger than Jiao Shen, and was absolutely insane. If anything could be said about Shen, at least he had all his faculties when he died. "...Why don't you explain why you're here? Why are you invading the Valley? Is it land you want? What, what do you want?"

Koshchei laughed harshly. "Vhat, you think I vant power? Vealth? Fame? Is this vhat you think?"

"So what is it?" Tai Lung asked. He felt Po's prescence, the panda was trying to get the drop on the old leopard, so the snow leopard kept him occupied.

"Immortality," Koshchei said with a wicked grin.

Tai Lung raised a brow. "...Immortality? I'll be honest, I know someone who would tell you it's not all it's chalked up to be."

"Long after I am dead," Koshchei said, his eyes radiating his madness, "People vill remember me, my name vill live forever, they vill fear me, I vill be the evil hiding in the shadows, the monster under the bed, the name you say vhen you vant to scare...you know vhat I mean."

"I don't. I _don't_ know what you mean."

"You and me, ve are not so different, _malchik_."

The hairs on the back of Tai Lung's neck rose. "I am _nothing_ like you," he hissed.

"But you are!" Koshchei said with a laugh. "Ve are like gods, you and me. The gods kill indis...vhat is vord?"

"Indiscriminately?"

"_Da_, that. They kill vitout mercy...vitout thought. Old, young, men, vomen, children...no one lives. You know vhat that feels like, to kill indiscriminately...that makes you a god."

"You have a sick theory about deities," Tai Lung growled.

"You haff already gotten immortality. You see these people? These villagers? They already know you...they haff seen the ugly side of you...they haff seen the monster, the demon...the god of death that you are."

"You're wrong."

"Your vork kill innocent villagers, scores of them, even if not direct-like. Then you kill rhinos at Chorh-Gom...hundreds kill instantly. I thought I vas good at killing...but you are greatest mass murderer in China."

Tai Lung's blood ran cold. "That...that's not true."

"You deny! Ha!" the old leopard laughed. "You deny that these people vill think you alvays as hero? You are still monster. You are knowing this, I am knowing this. No one changes, and no matter how you pretend, you vill never change. Once monster, monster alvays."

"You're wrong," the snow leopard said firmly. "I am no monster. Not anymore."

"Then prove it. Defeat me, vitout killing me."

Tai Lung smirked. "Don't mind if I do."

That was when Po shoved Koshchei right into Tai Lung's waiting arms. Tai Lung gripped him tightly, crushing the old leopard's chest against his own. His mouth right by the old leopard's ear, he whispered, "Everyone has a dark side, Asmodei Koshchei. I never denied mine. But everyone also has a light side, and I've accepted mine. And despite the horrible things you've done...I forgive you."

Tai Lung left go of him long enough to press one hand to the old leopard's forehead, and the other over the leopard's heart.

Just as had happened to Lan Duo not long before, Koshchei growled, then screamed, his whole body violently convulsing as the golden light began to seep out of his body. Tai Lung's hands began to glow as well, somehow able to hold on as the old leopard shook and lashed out at him with his claws. The golden light passed from Tai Lung's hands into Koshchei's body until he was awash in holy light. His screams became louder, and louder, until the windows rattled in the houses around them.

Then the expected black smoke came from his mouth, and eyes, and nose, and just about every orifice he had. The blackness enveloped the old leopard, completely shielding him from view. But neither Tai Lung nor Po expected the explosion that knocked them back several yards.

When Tai Lung came back to his senses, he waited for the inevitable strike from a very angry Amur leopard, only to find a very silent street. Gingerly, he raised himself up to a sitting position. He looked across the street and then crawled his way over to Po. The snow leopard was exhausted, the move taking more out of him than he expected. When he reached the panda, the snow leopard helped him to sit up. Po shook his head and held it in his hands.

"Coulda done without the bump on the noggin," the Dragon Warrior groaned.

"I'm sorry about that," the Phoenix Warrior said. "I didn't know that would happen."

"What _did_ just happen?"

"The Phoenix Tear technique...or that's what I intended to do. The Phoenix Scroll said nothing about explosions. I expected this to go the same way as with Duo."

"Isn't that technique supposed to get rid of all the darkness in someone?"

"That's the intent, as far as I know."

They looked to the middle of the street, seeing nothing but a shallow crater and quickly dissipating smoke, cast away by a wintry wind. All that lay in the middle of the crater were Koshchei's clothes. The Amur leopard was nowhere to be seen.

"Huh. I guess there was nothing but darkness in him," Po said.

"But that doesn't make sense," Tai Lung said. "Everyone has some good in them, don't they? Even just a little bit. I refuse to believe anyone was rotten to the core. I may be a bit biased in this opinion, of course."

Po shakily stood and leaned back against the wall. Tai Lung joined him, looking up and down the street. "Well, shall we survey the damage? I highly doubt he would be running around in his skivvies somewhere."

"Yeah, might as well. Not sure I can stomach it."

"Me neither, but I want to be sure."

They slowly made their way to the crater, Tai Lung leaning on Po for support. He felt much more tired than he had with Duo, and he figured it was because cleansing Koshchei of his darkness was a lot harder, given his age and the range of his sins.

"Municipality won't be happy with another crater to fill in," Po said idly.

"Hmm," his friend agreed. They stepped into the crater and surveyed the clothing.

"It's like he just disappeared into thin air..."

Then something moved inside the clothes. The warriors jumped back in alarm, shared a look, then gaped at the pile when it started to cry. Their jaws dropped. They scrambled back into the crater and carefully lifted the discarded tunic to reveal...

"Holy crap," Po gasped. "It's a baby."

* * *

**A few notes (many of them geek references): **

Formation Forty-two is my not-so-subtle nod to Douglas Adams fans, as "42" is featured prominently in the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" series.

Tigress and Dalang's argument about murder vs. defense is a nod to the "Doctor Who" episode when the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) makes his first appearance; I personally loved it because of the dichonomy and difference in interpretation that the event had, and is, of course, open to debate as to whether it is better to spare your enemy or to make sure they never threaten you again (I like debate, so sue me...but seriously, please don't)

Su Lin's "that's not incense" line is from the movie "Serenity", when Inara used a similar ploy to get out of danger.

Mr. Ping saying "Thank you, come again!" is my nod to Apu Nahasapeemapepalon (sp?) from The Simpsons...it felt like something Ping would say, as he is ever the savvy and shrewd businessman.

Sonam checking how far Mei Xing could reach him from her bed is a reference to the "Scrubs" episode when Carla is giving birth; Keith, who is Elliot's main squeeze at the time, does the smart thing before delivering bad news.

Before anyone asks, yes, my not explaining what Formation 42 actually entailed was intentional. As was not bothering to explain how Sun Bear's staff survived the fire at the Phoenix Temple. Why did I not bother? Because this chapter ended up being nearly 40 pages in MS Word, and I wasn't going to make it any longer. And I had been working on it for months. I was ready to get it out the door. So there.

The scene where Su Lin's authority is challenged ("Why should we take orders from you?"), and she promptly proves _why_ she should be taken seriously, is from the recent Marvel Avengers movie, in a pivotal scene between Captain America/Steve Rogers, and some of NYC's finest. (See this movie if you can; as a Joss Whedon fan, I was not disappointed!)

When Koshchei says "You have a lot of fight in you, I like that" and Tigress responds with "Then you're going to love me" came from the Dark Knight. (Is it obvious yet I'm a comic book super hero fan?)

And yes, "Big Damn Heroes" is another Firefly reference (And I'm not the only fan hoping that the success of The Avengers will entice someone to bring Firefly back!)


	21. Chapter 21: The Battle, Part 3

I'm well aware its been over a year since I last updated this story. I can't leave it unfinished, but it's been a really busy past 12 months. I've gotten married, started saving for a house with my husband, and I've been really busy with my work and career. I've come to the decision that, once this fic is done, I will retire from fanfiction writing. I've been considering this for awhile, because I really don't have as much time for it anymore, and I want to start focusing on original works I can one day publish. I anticipate one more chapter to this story, and that should be the end.

Without further ado, let's get to the story that I'm sure everyone has been waiting a long time for...

Disclaimer: Kung Fu Panda belongs to Dreamworks Animation Studios. I claim no ownership to the original Dreamworks characters, but the original characters in this story belong to me, so please do not use them without my permission. Thank you.

* * *

Chapter 21: The Battle, Part 3

* * *

Monkey helped Tigress steady herself as she stumbled into the main square. "What happened to you?" he asked.

Tigress massaged her throat, still hurting from Koshchei's grip. She probably had a nasty bruise, but she didn't let it bother her. She had other things to worry about. "Don't worry about it. How are we doing?"

"The Masters Council got here at just the right time. But as it turns out..." the simian pointed, "We might not have needed them after all."

Tigress was stunned.

Farmers, merchants, people she had never expected, were fighting off the remaining outlaws, sending many of them packing. It wasn't the mere fact the villagers were fighting—it was the ferocity with which they fought. She had heard it said before that it wasn't the size of the warrior in the fight, it was the size of the fight in the warrior. She was reminded of this as soon as she saw a goose knock a huge boar onto his back and deliver several brutal-looking chops...and an eldery sow going after a group of crocs with her walking stick (Tigress had to wince to hear bones breaking as the cane made contact with each croc's body)...and much to her astonishment...

"Mr. Lu?!"

Indeed, the old goat was giving the outlaws more of a beating than any of the masters ever could. Mr. Lu didn't let up in his assault, and his speed was impressive for a man his age. Mantis noted the fox trying to sneak up on Mr. Lu before Tigress could move to help. The old goat, rather than looking grateful, snapped at Mantis, "I didn't serve my country to let some whipper-snapper steal my thunder!" And to show his fury, he swung the cane wide, laying out three opponents.

Mantis stared at him a moment, then shrugged and hopped off.

Tigress shook herself out of her shock just in time to jump back, finding an ox slamming face-first into the ground where she had been standing just seconds before. Glancing up, she grinned. Crane's entire extended family had made it, right when they were needed the most.

Crane led his cousins in an elaborate flying formation, diving into the crowd of outlaws and picking them off one by one. Crane, the strongest of his clan, swooped down and with a furious beat of his wings, laid out a group that had been charging at the villagers. The villagers saw their enemy down and, their resolve strengthened, charged the overwhelmed outlaws.

"We're beating them back!" Tigress shouted, rallying her fighters. "Advance as one! ADVANCE!"

Everyone – villager, kung fu master, and airborne fighter – moved as one single, terrifying wave upon the beleagured outlaws. When the defenders met the outlaws in the charge, there arose such a clatter of weapons that Tigress was momentarily deafened. The sound of the clash echoed off the surrounding mountains, amplifying them even further. The force of it scared off many of the outlaws, who finally gave up and made a run for it.

"Oh no you don't!" Master Ox shouted. "Masters, charge!" One by one, the members of the Masters Council took after the retreating outlaws, wisely seeing that the villagers had it under control.

And they did.

Tigress found – much to her relief – she didn't have to raise a finger to end the battle. It was effectively over already.

"We got them!" she shouted to the defenders. "Keep pushing them! We're almost through!"

That was when the explosion hit.

Everyone froze to see the blinding golden light erupting from another part of the village. Tigress realized that it was coming from the Long and Feng...and she smiled.

"What's that mean?" Monkey asked, unsure why he was whispering in the suddenly quiet square.

Tigress grinned wider to see a mingled phoenix and dragon in the smoke that rose above the village. She said loudly, "It means Koshchei's been defeated by the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior."

Immediately, the outlaws lost their nerve. They began to retreat en masse.

Mr. Lu called over to Tigress. "What's your orders, Master Tigress?"

She hesitated. What had Dalang said earlier? She remembered her harsh words: _That was murder. No, that was defense_, he had answered.

This decision didn't sit well with her, and she knew she would regret this to her dying day...but she would also regret it if she let them get away.

"Finish it."

* * *

"Holy crap," Po gasped. "It's a baby."

And so it was. Tangled up in the thick woolen clothes Koshchei had worn was a tiny, newborn leopard. Its fur was dark gold, with faint rosette spots. Its mouth was open wide to let out a piercing wail and its eyes were shut tight as it cried louder.

Tai Lung instinctively knelt down and wrapped the woolen tunic around the baby. The infant opened its eyes and looked up at him, and the snow leopard gasped.

"His eyes..."

Po looked closer.

The infant's eyes were honey-brown.

"Wait, what?" the panda asked. "What is this? What just happened? What just..._what_?!"

Tai Lung was shaking his head in amazement. "It's...unbelievable. I mean, the Phoenix Tear Technique was supposed to remove all darkness and evil in a person..." he continued thinking aloud, "and we guessed that Asmodei Koshchei _was_ rotten to the core, and I suppose there's nothing more pure than a baby...it's a new life, after all. A new chance."

"So the gods gave him a second chance? Why?"

The snow leopard shrugged. "For the same reason they gave me a second chance."

"'Kay, which was...?"

"No stinking clue."

"So we're just going to chalk this up to some weird supernatural mumbo-jumbo we would never figure out in a thousand years?"

"Works for me."

They turned to the sound of heavy panting and froze when Duo rounded the corner. The wolf had a savage light in his eyes as he stared them down. Po wondered if he would have to prepare himself for the wolf to attack. But Duo wasn't bothering to look at them. His eyes were scanning all over, flicking from one side of the street to the other, up to the rooftops, and even behind a barrel.

Duo let out a snarl of frustration. "Where is he?"

"Who?"

"KOSHCHEI!" the wolf shouted. "Where the hell is he?!"

Instinctively, Tai Lung held out the bundle in his arms.

Duo froze, stared at the snow leopard, then at the quiet bundle, then back at the snow leopard. "Dude."

"What?" Tai Lung asked.

"Please tell me that's not what I think it is."

"What do you think it is?"

"I think it's his head and you're just fucking with me because I wanted revenge and you got it before me and are rubbing my nose in it."

The snow leopard chose his next words carefully. "Well...this _is_ likely to mess with your head, I suppose. But first, a question: how good are you with children?"

Duo blinked, and tilted his head to the side in confusion. "What?"

Then the baby began to move. Duo jumped so high the Phoenix Warrior wondered if the wolf had sprouted wings, and much like a cat, the hair on the back of his neck had stood on end. Wide-eyed, the wolf strode forward and – remarkably gentle – drew some fabric away from the infant's face.

The baby immediately stopped crying and looked up at the wolf.

Duo gasped and dropped his spear in shock.

"Holy...no way, no way, it's..."

"Duo," Po said gently, "this is all that's left of Asmodei Koshchei."

"But it's..."

"Yeah, we know. Remember what Tai did to you back at the cabin?"

Duo mutely nodded, still staring at the baby.

"Well, Tai used the same technique on Koshchei and..." Po looked to his friend for help.

Tai Lung took over: "The Phoenix Tear technique is supposed to remove all evil and darkness from someone's soul."

"So Koshchei was rotten to the core," Duo accurately guessed, "And this baby means that he gets to start all over."

Po hesitated in his answer: "Yeah, that's about the size of it." The Dragon Warrior did not like the hard tone in the wolf's reply.

"So instead of ending it completely, we're just going to let it grow up and become a monster all over again. Is that it?"

Po was horrified. Part of it was that he hadn't considered something so horrible – were they really taking a risk in allowing this baby to live? The other part was what Duo had just suggested. And the hint of it made the panda's stomach churn.

But Tai Lung was, thankfully, better prepared. Perhaps it was also a function of having become a father (sooner rather than later), that the Phoenix Warrior stood defiantly at his full height and pushed the baby into Duo's arms.

"Then by all means, Lan Duo, if you can look into this baby's eyes and tell me he is a monster, with a straight face, then you may kill him. Go on, let's see if you are a baby killer after all."

This seemed to snap him out of his stupor and turned his rage on the feline. "I am NOT a baby killer, cat!"

"And neither are we," he calmly replied. Po was amazed – he felt ready to hit the wolf, not calmly rebuke him. But there was Tai Lung, standing tall, albeit bloodied and sore, but staring down the wolf and his murderous intentions with a fire in his eyes Po had not seen before.

"Go on," Tai Lung repeated, glaring at the wolf, "if you're that concerned, kill him."

Duo hesitated, then bent down to pick up the golden spear. Po gasped and moved forward to stop him. But Duo had stopped on his own volition. He was still staring at the baby, who was staring back at him.

"It's just..."

"Just what?" Po asked him. Then the panda realized the wolf was shaking, and had suddenly paled.

"It's just...but that's impossible," Duo said, shaking his head. "It's just not possible. I know I've seen those eyes somewhere before, I've seen that face, but...not possible, it's not possible..."

"Nothing is impossible."

Duo glanced back at Tai Lung, then at the baby, then with one last snarl, raised his spear...and stabbed it right into the snowy ground.

"DAMN IT!" he swore.

Tai Lung calmly brought the baby back against his chest and – Po could tell – let out a sigh of relief.

"So what now?" the wolf asked. "Is it over?"

A sudden roar made them all jump. Po looked over his shoulder and saw the Crane clan move dive down from on high and into what he was sure was the final advance. "Not yet it's not."

"We'd best join them," Tai Lung said.

"With the kid?" Duo challenged.

"Of course not." The snow leopard turned the baby over to the wolf and pointed to the restaurant. "Take him in there. My wife and friends should give you both shelter."

Duo dubiously looked at the front door, but only nodded, and watched as the Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior set off for the village center. Then he looked down at the baby in his arms again, looked into the baby's eyes.

"I gotta be losing it," he said to the child. "You look like you have Lang's eyes..."

A sudden clatter down the street caught his attention. For a reason he couldn't explain, he felt his blood freeze in his veins to see fleeing outlaws coming straight his way. Then he saw why: he recognized these outlaws. They had been among Koshchei's most loyal...and consequently, they are also the most "batshit crazy". And when they saw him, they glared dangerously.

The baby in his arms cried.

"Oh crap," he said.

The outlaws charged at him. Duo's instincts kicked in. He took each end of the baby's bunting, twisted it tightly, then slung the baby bundle across his back and tied it in front. Then he kicked his left foot out and uprooted the Golden Spear just as the first outlaw came within stabbing distance. The wolf was like a fury, a demon amongst them. He was vastly outnumbered, and it was all he could do to not fall under their barrage. A few got close enough to hit, kick, and punch him – hard. Duo fell back a couple paces, propping himself up with the spear so he wouldn't fall. He knew if he fell, he was dead.

The baby strapped to his back shrieked, piercing his ears. "No..." he hissed. He grit his teeth and gritted out a snarl. He thrust the spear out, deflecting a sword, turned on his heel and swung the spear like a mace and hit the assailant in the head, sending him down. The smell of singed fur hit his nose, but he ignored it. Duo stabbed another, swinging the spearshaft over his head, twirling it in his hands and arms, around his front and back, a golden windmill of death for any who got too close.

One giant ox grabbed the spearshaft, and punched Duo right in the face. The wolf fell back, stopping himself just short of slamming into the wall with his foot against the bricks. The baby was still crying, and Duo felt blood streaming from his nose, but the ox's shrieks of pain were even worse. The wolf watched in horror as the ox's hand, still wrapped around the spearshaft shuddered and the bovine let out an unholy shriek as he burst into flames. Before Duo could react, the ox had become fully engulfed in fire, then turned to dust before his eyes. The Golden Spear clattered to the street, its fall cushioned by the ash where the ox had just been.

Duo blinked. "Huh. Interesting." He rushed over and grabbed the spear again, standing straight and facing off against the outlaws still standing. There were two left, but they looked like they were starting to question their loyalties. Duo decided to bluff—he had the crap beaten out of him, and the wounds he'd gotten from Koshchei still had not completely healed, and that last punch had made him a little dizzy.

"I'm giving you one warning: Get out, or I'll do to you what I did to your friend."

"That's impossible," one of them said.

Duo's ears ticked up, and he smiled devilishly, lowering himself into a stance, ready to strike, the spearpoint held out in front of him. "Nothing is impossible."

The outlaws shared a look and stared back at the wolf. Apparently they thought they could take him. They called his bluff, and he knew he was screwed.

At least until they moved forward and came to a lurched stop, twin blades sticking out of their backs, courtesy of the huge tiger who had just jumped between the outlaws and the wolf.

Dalang drew his swords out of their bodies and stepped back to avoid the dead outlaws as they fell, their blood staining the snow. He turned to look at Duo, who looked stunned.

"I had them."

Dalang took in the wolf's condition and the crying infant strapped to his back. He wanted to make a smart-ass comment, but the look on the wolf's face told him not to. "I believe you. Just thought you could use a hand. You're a hell of a warrior."

"Thanks. Uh..."

"Jiao Dalang."

Duo blinked. "So you're the guy Koshchei was after."

"Yup."

Duo paused. "Never would've believed it if I'd seen you before, but you're not a guy I wanna piss off."

"Have you met Tai Lung?"

"Yeah, actually. He and Po brought me here."

Dalang grinned. "They're back?! Thank the—"

"Yeah, uh, is there a better place to do this?" the wolf said, pointing to the many dead outlaws. "I'm not feeling so good."

"Oh yeah, right, c'mere man, I got you. What's your name?"

"Lan Duo."

Dalang gave him a dubious look. "Your name is 'lazy'?"

"My uncle hated my guts. He raised me, he named me. I didn't have much choice in the matter. Just call me Duo."

Dalang shrugged and helped him into the house, slamming and bolting the door behind them.

* * *

Tai Lung landed on a roof close to the main square, crouched down and watching for his chance to move in. Po landed next to him a few seconds later, though not as gracefully, and out of breath. "Man, I still can't keep up with you..."

"You're better than you used to be. Look!" he said, pointing at the throng, "They're retreating!"

"Not all of them," Po warned, pointing off to their left. The snow leopard followed the panda's finger and narrowed his eyes. "Hullo, what's this?"

A pack of feline outlaws had broken off from the rest of the group and were regrouping, then doubling back, weapons drawn. They were clearly looking to get even.

"Why aren't they retreating?" Po wondered.

"Because they have nothing more to lose," Tai Lung said darkly. He stood. "Time to make that prophecy come true."

"Uh...remind me again?"

Tai Lung fought the urge to roll his eyes. "When the Dragon soars and the Phoenix Dances..."

"Oh right, _that_ prophecy. Yeah, let's do it."

"Then these may come in handy."

Both warriors whirled to find the Wu Sisters had come up behind them. Wu Tian held out a bundle wrapped in red silk, and held it reverently to Tai Lung. "Sir, it was an honor to bear these to you."

Tai Lung took the bundle and quickly unwrapped it: his mother's fans. Then he recalled, "You heard about my mother from Aunt Wu?"

Tian nodded, smiling warmly. "Your mother is my hero. She is the model I live by. I hope I can someday make her as proud as I know you've made her."

He smiled. "Thank you. Now, will you join us?"

Tian shared a smirk with her sisters and they took out wind and fire wheels they had hidden beneath their cloaks. "Captain Altai and Lieutenant Hu are on their way, but we will be happy to escort you."

Without further ado, the five of them ran along the rooftops to the village center, Po in the lead. He was the first to leap off the roof's eave and land firmly in the square. Tai Lung flipped off the roof and landed directly next to the panda, unsheathing his mother's fans with expert flicks of the wrist.

"On our right," Po said.

Tai Lung glanced over at the advancing outlaws. "I see them."

He turned sharply to face the advancing outlaws, who faltered to see the snow leopard. Without having met him before, they seemed to know him by reputation alone. "Good evening, gents," he greeted. "Shall we dance?"

Out of the corner of his mouth, he said to Po, "I see twenty here."

"Thirty more on the roof," the panda said with a tilt of his head, indicating the wolves running along the roof tiles. Many more had circled around to surround the two warriors. Each one was armed to tooth and claw. Each wolf looked highly trained.

Panda and snow leopard shared a look...then shared a sly smile.

Too easy.

The first of the felines charged at Tai Lung; the snow leopard brought up one of the fans, keenly slicing through the spear shaft, then turned swiftly, delivering roundhouse to the other cat's chin. He didn't give the other bandits a chance to attack, and charged into them. His fans flashed in the mid-afternoon sun, gleaming red and gold with the dying sun.

Po was having an easier time with it, using Oogway's staff to take out as many as Tai Lung. Po's attacks centered on his trademark "belly bounce", and the more recently discovered upper body strength. Just as in his childhood dreams, he was finally strong enough that a single punch was enough to fell a single opponent. He swung the staff around over his head, jabbing into abdomens and foreheads, tripping others and hitting a few more squarely in the chest.

Tai Lung kicked high and knocked the sword out of an opponent's hand, and while the same opponent stabbed at him with the hidden knife in his other hand, the snow leopard leaped and turned horizontally in midair, the knife slicing nothing but air before Tai Lung's arm swept around and hit the enemy's elbow. He turned swiftly and knocked the bad guy out with a jab of his elbow to the other's face.

A sharp whistle above them warned of another attack. Clearly some members of the rebel horde were not yet beaten, and believed they at least had the chance of glory for killing the Dragon Warrior and the formidable Tai Lung.

Unfortunately for the rebels, the Wu Sisters were no longer on their side. And those wolves were nowhere near as well-trained as the snow leopardesses were.

The first rooftop wolf rushed forward, and Tian completed her pirouette, swinging the wind and fire wheels around, slashing across his front. She stepped into a lunge, low and swung at another; a three-step-turn, _pas de chat_, another fifth-position with right foot in front, she turned around the other way, fans slicing the air and every opponent that came her way. With a hop-skip and axle turn, _pirouette_, _pirouette_, turn, turn, turn, one right after the other along the central beam of the roof, straight towards the twenty wolves in front of her, then one last turn, and up into a perfect _jete_.

She landed in a crouch, waited for one wolf to get beyond her before she struck out behind her and hit him directly in the spine. Tian swung her back leg around to the front, turning her body completely around as she fell into a perfect split, arching her back, and striking with the same wind and fire wheel.

Two wolves made the mistake of standing directly on each side of her, so when Tian adjusted her body and jerked her legs around, she literally swept the wolves off their feet, only for their faces to be slashed open.

Tian continued twisting her body until she was standing again and quickly took stock of the situation. She had taken down fourteen...or thirteen? One wolf charged at her, snarling viciously; one side kick to the face, and another one to the gut, sending him back to crash into a pile of wooden crates with a shower of splinters.

_That_ was fourteen.

Zhu, being the smallest of her siblings, focused more on her flexibility and speed, letting the angry and clumsy wolves do her work for her. When they thought they had a clear hit on her, she dodged, and the strike meant for her instead went to the wolf's brother in arms. With several quick moves, she shoved them off the roof and onto the street below.

Jiang, being the strongest, went for the jugular. Her mother may have taught her the finer points of Lotus Style...but it was clearly not Jiang's style. The green-eyed female punched and kicked, elbowed and kneed, throwing outlaws over her shoulder and into others. Her pace was fast, furious and ruthless. Yet there was a subtle grace to it...for example, the only thing she picked up from her Lotus Style training was the "Heartbeat as the drum you dance to" Wu Lien had taught her. Jiang was the only one who knew this dance, and she used this to her advantage.

Tian threw down another outlaw (number eighteen) when number nineteen was taken down by a much unexpected feline.

"Need backup?" Tigress asked.

Tian blinked. "So you're talking to me now?"

"Tai Lung filled me in."

"Ah. Yeah, I could use a hand. See those—"

"On it." Tigress took a running leap and pounced directly on top of the boar that was going straight for Po. The boar didn't even know what hit him. Tigress glanced around. Po and Tai Lung had joined the line of masters, and the other members of the Furious Five, in a final offensive to purge the outlaws from the village for good. Tigress jumped in next to Viper and Monkey. "All ready?"

"Give the order," Tai Lung called back. "We're ready!"

Tigress nodded and crouched down, waiting. The other warriors followed her lead and, tense, waited for her signal.

"NOW!"

They moved as one giant wave of kung fu, licking at the heels of the retreating outlaws. Po and Tai Lung forged ahead, running right into the horde. The bandits and outlaws ran even faster to escape. There was a bottleneck at the village gates. Desperate outlaws scaled the walls and dropped to the other side. Some were trampled by their own brethren in a final crush to avoid almost certain death at the hands of the kung fu masters and fighting villagers.

Po called a halt twenty feet from the wall. "Take cover!"

The masters and villagers obeyed without question, before the explosion hit. Tai Lung grabbed Crane and Mantis, Tigress grabbed Viper and Monkey, and ducked behind a building as debris rained from the sky.

"What was that?" Crane asked.

"My guess?" Tai Lung said, "Probably Altai."

"Who?"

"Old friend of mine."

"Must be," Viper said admiringly. "You didn't tell us you had friends in the army."

The snow leopard laughed mirthlessly, "Funny you should mention, I had no idea, either."

"Where's Po?"

Tigress's question made them all freeze. Tai Lung was the first to move, jumping up and calling Po's name.

"He's out there!" a villager shouted.

Snow leopard and Furious Five stood and looked through the now gaping holes blasted in the village walls to give the outlaws an outlet to freedom. There were no bandits, rogues, or outlaws left in the village; they were all on their way to the Thread of Hope, followed closely by a single figure bearing a peachwood staff.

"Po?" It came out as a whisper, but, coming back to his senses, he chased after him. "Po! PO!"

The panda didn't seem to hear him. Tai Lung was exhausted, but he pushed himself harder to catch up with the panda. Just as they neared the sugarloaf mountaintops, the snow leopard finally grabbed the panda's sleeve. "PO!"

He jumped back when he saw Po's eyes. They were glowing with a golden sheen. "Po?"

The panda shook his head, blinked a few times, before the familiar green came back to his irises. "Whoa, sorry. You say something, buddy?"

"What are you doing? We've got them on the run."

"I know. My job isn't done."

"What are you talking about? Po, we saved the village, all of us. Our job is done..."

"Yours may be, mine isn't. I...I can't explain it, Tai, but I need to follow them, make sure they don't come back."

_They would have to be pretty thick to come back now, with several dozen kung fu masters, black ops agents, and angry locals fending them off,_ the snow leopard thought.

Po smirked. "Good point, but...I think the Dragon is telling me to finish it."

Tai Lung hesitated. "Do you want me to come with you?"

Po put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "Go rest, Phoenix Warrior. You have new priorities. Let me finish this. Go home and rest."

Suddenly reminded, Tai Lung paled. "Mei Xing...gods, the baby! I don't even know if they..."

"Tai, go home," Po said firmly. "Go be with your family."

"And what, pray tell, do I tell _your_ father?"

"Tell him I'll be home in time for dinner."

"_Po_," he said shortly; he knew Po was lying.

"Tell him not to worry; when I come home, we can celebrate the Winter Festival like there's no tomorrow. You've done well, Phoenix Warrior, and I couldn't ask for a better friend or brother."

Tai Lung smiled, clapping his hand over the panda's. "No better brother than the Dragon Warrior."

Po smiled and nodded and, wrapping his red robes closer around him, slowly walked after the retreating army. Tai Lung waited, watching the Dragon Warrior's retreating back until the panda was out of sight. And even then, he had difficulty tearing himself away. He slowly walked back, tucking his mother's fans safely in his belt. He climbed over the rubble of the destroyed wall and joined the Five and other masters. A few were congratulating him, but he ignored them. All he saw was the devastation the battle had caused.

Tai Lung turned back to the broken wall, shaking his head over the destruction. "Did you use enough explosives, Altai?" He sighed, then closed his eyes, crossing his legs and sitting in full lotus position, right amidst all the rubble. He didn't care that he was getting strange looks; he'd received worse. He focused on his breath, and meditated:

_If you're listening, I need a way to fix this wall quickly. We can't leave it this way all winter in case the horde comes back..._

The Phoenix's voice echoed in his thoughts: _Then fix it, Phoenix Warrior._

Tai Lung thought about it, then replied with his usual cynicism, _Thanks, that was almost helpful._

_Heal the wall, Phoenix Warrior,_ she said_. It is as broken as that wolf you healed. _

_So what? I just lay hands on the wall and..._

He opened his eyes, then smiled a little. "Well, I'll be damned..." He stood quickly, feeling a bit dizzy from the blood rushing to his head, and pressed his palms together to steady himself. Holding his hands in the _namaste_ position in front of his heart, he followed the yogic breathing Sun Bear had taught him, and with one deep, clear breath, placed his palms upon the wall.

He had no memory of what happened after that. Others would tell him later what they saw...and many of them couldn't believe it. A golden light had begun to glow from deep within his body, growing brighter and brighter until it spread all over his body, then to his hands, and from his hands, it spread to the wall. Like a sun beam hitting a pane of glass…that was how some described it, how quickly the golden light ran the length of the village walls. And in the blink of an eye, where there had once been rubble and a gaping hole, there was now a full and complete wall.

When the light had dissipated as quickly as it had spread out, the snow leopard fell to his knees, leaning heavily against the suddenly repaired wall. He felt several pairs of hands on him, lifting him, helping him stand. He thought he saw Tigress's astonished but worried face...

"Could someone get me home?" he asked weakly, for the effort of fixing the wall had taken quite a bit out of him. "Only I'd like to see my wife before she gives birth..."

He blacked out.

* * *

It was quite some time later when the last of the horde made it to the Thread of Hope. Those that had gotten there before the others had camped there, while they figured out what to do. The stragglers still had the memories of the terrible battle fresh in their minds, while those who had been the first to retreat were planning on a return, to once and for all destroy that damn valley.

They quickly changed their mind when word reached them of just how powerful the Dragon and Phoenix Warriors were. After two days, those who had been keeping watch, just in case someone came after them to finish them off for good, someone called out that they had been followed...by one lone panda.

Word spread quickly that the Dragon Warrior, and the Dragon Warrior alone had followed them. There was no word yet of the army coming behind him, no word of back-up...but those who knew better already began crossing the bridge. Those who stayed to fight snarled and hissed and growled and howled as the Dragon Warrior made his appearance.

Po looked down over the throng, tens of thousands left...tens of thousands at a dead end, except for a terribly rickety bridge that would not support them all at one time. Something needed to be done, and, by heaven, he would do something.

The outlaws were stopped at the Thread of Hope, each wondering what to do, who to go first over the bridge.

Po was going to give them more than one option.

The Dragon Warrior grasped the peachwood staff in his hand and calmly walked his way into the proverbial lion's den. What few outlaws still had some fight left in them launched themselves at him. He repelled them with quick flicks of his wrists, twirling the staff in all directions, laying them out. He brought it down on the foot of one croc and glared until the reptile cowed and slunk away to join his brethren.

Po jabbed the staff into the frozen earth hard enough for the staff to stand up straight. He pressed his palms together and closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing. Then he focused on his surroundings.

He felt the breaths of each outlaw, each heartbeat, thundering in his head. He felt the roots of the trees reaching further down into the soil for anchor and for water, he felt the wind in the branches. He felt the rocks at his feet, the wind rustling his fur

He took one more deep breath then brought one foot up, and slammed it into the ground. The ground shook beneath him, so much that the outlaws all fell as one. Po brought up the other foot and likewise brought it down hard into the ground. He drew his palms together and pressed them up, palms facing the sky, as if the sky were caving in and he was pressing it back together.

The ground beneath him shook so violently that the fragile Thread of Hope crumbled and snapped apart. _Chi_ radiated from the Dragon Warrior's body in an intense golden light.

Some of the outlaws would later claim that they saw the most extraordinary thing at that moment: a dragon, a great golden dragon dashing across the sky like a sunbeam, then diving right for the ground. The dragon disappeared inside the panda, they claimed, and the panda now had the dragon's strength, for how else could they explain what happened next?

The ground rumbled, shaking even more violently. Then they heard it, like a waterfall flushed with spring run-off, like a landslide...and suddenly, to their amazement, the Devil's Mouth disappeared. The ground at the bottom of the chasm was literally pushed up by the panda's raw power.

Po had, in essence, reversed the move Oogway had used to create the chasm in the first place. Though the outlaws didn't know that.

Now before them, lay the remains of previous bridges, various debris and rocks, and perhaps most morbidly, the bleached bones of people who had fallen to their deaths; the only evidence of the Devil's Mouth were the spires that still jutted out of the ground.

Then the Dragon Warrior spoke to them, only it didn't sound like him. The outlaws would later say that it sounded like all the multitude of Heaven were speaking through the panda, so when he gave them the order, they followed it.

"_I have given you the way,"_ the panda said in a disembodied voice, _"You have until sundown to cross this land. If you are not at the other side by sunset, you will fall down into the chasm and be lost forever, where no god can find you. Go, and never, __**never**__ return."_

The more cowardly members of the horde did not need a second reminder. The vast majority immediately bolted, leaving behind their weapons and running full speed across the expanse.

The stragglers were still in awe of the panda, gazing in amazement upon this creature, this warrior, who stood above them and glared, the normal calm green gaze replaced with bright golden light. Wordlessly, they each got up and started to sprint across, leaving everything behind.

The Dragon Warrior surveyed his handiwork and acknowledged the bandits, murderers, and others as they ran for their lives. Calmly, he lowered himself to full lotus position, closed his eyes, and began to meditate until sundown.

* * *

When he came to, a pair of familiar green eyes were watching him.

"Hullo, Ming Hua," Tai Lung greeted. He felt, if possible, even more exhausted in this spectral plane than he did in the real world, but at least he could move here. Somewhere, he was dimly aware that his body was still unconscious. Ming Hua, however, was smiling.

"Tai Lung...well done."

"So it's over then?"

"Yes, it's over."

"I didn't destroy Koshchei, like you told me to."

"No, trust me, you did."

"But…"

"Tai Lung," she said sternly, and he listened. She had never gotten cross with him, and instinct told him to listen to her, and listen closely. "Koshchei is gone, dead and gone, for good, and he will never rise to lay waste to or bring terror to the world ever again. Take my word for it."

"I do, and while I _do_ believe you…I didn't kill him. I thought that was part of the plan."

She sighed, "You can destroy someone without killing them. I would have been disappointed had you actually killed him; and, I think, on some level you would have been disappointed with yourself. I remember how you refused to be the monster while fighting that awful horse..."

"Is that why I didn't see you at all during our journey? You were here, keeping an eye on things?"

The tigress looked impressed. "Yes, actually. You're getting good at this."

"It helps that you're a bit more predictable than Oogway. By that I mean," he said quickly, sensing he had insulted her, "I know you wouldn't have abandoned my mum if she needed you..."

"And trust me, she needed me. Though in hindsight, it looks like Mei Xing had quite a few people looking out for her. And she's capable of handling herself as well. I mean, I already knew that if she and Nima had ever met that they would get along, but imagine my surprise to see your wife getting up after hours of labor to shoot off a few arrows from a crossbow..."

"She WHAT?!"

"Nothing," she said innocently. "You heard nothing. And so help you, you will _say_ nothing."

Tai Lung thought about it, then realized the wisdom of the advice. "Bad idea to anger a new mother?"

"Bad idea to anger a mother, period. You didn't have that experience, so I'm just warning you now. Mothers who are very protective of their babies can be...well..."

"Say no more, I've seen how Tigress fights. But she's a special case, right? I mean, it's not like my mum ever did anything like that, right?" he laughed.

Ming Hua didn't laugh with him.

He stared.

She stammered, "Uh...I mean, _of course_ she didn't. Anyway!" she said gleefully with a clap of her hands, changing the subject in a manner very much like her youngest son, "You may want to wake up now, I think someone wants to see you..."

Tai Lung's eyes shot open and he sat up quickly. He was back in his house, laid out on the couch in the living room, with Dalang sitting nearby watching over him. "Welcome back," the tiger said. He looked exhausted, worn, but relieved. "How you feelin', big guy?"

"I've been better. How's Mei?"

"Why don't you go ask her yourself?"

"She's alright?"

"Both she and the baby survived the birth," the tiger chef assured him. "They're both healthy. Your dad on the other hand..."

The snow leopard felt a weight sinking in his stomach. "My dad...?"

"Fainted."

He wasn't sure he had heard that right. "My dad...Sonam..._fainted_?"

"When Mei gave birth, yup. Always the ones you least expect, right?"

Shakily, the snow leopard stood with Dalang's assistance and plodded over to the door. Feeling a sudden burst of energy, he knocked and Dalang stood back to give him privacy. The bedroom door opened, and there stood Shifu, looking surprisingly fresh, and even more astoundingly, smiling.

Tai Lung stood at the door, bloodied, battered, and utterly exhausted. Shifu took one look at him, looked over his shoulder back into the birthing room, then back at him. "You know, I'm having a hard time figuring out which one of you actually had a baby."

"Not funny, old man."

The red panda master laughed and threw the door open. "Get in there; your wife and baby are waiting for you."

He stepped into the room and looked right over to the bed, where Mei Xing lay back, propped up by many pillows. She was holding a squirming bundle, wrapped in a soft knitted blanket. Her fur was askew, matted with sweat and tears, and she looked drawn, exhausted, and…nervous? "Mei Xing?"

She looked up at him, grateful to see him, but still looked apprehensive. "Thank Heaven you survived," she said. "I was so worried…"

"So was I," he said, crossing the room, taking her into his arms, and giving her by far the deepest kiss he had ever given her. After two months of separation, and untold stress on both sides, both of them needed this kiss, this desperate embrace, more than they had ever needed anything else. When Tai Lung finally pulled away, he still hugged her close to his chest, fighting down the relieved tears that had sprung to his eyes. "Praise the gods, you're safe…I never would have forgiven myself if something happened to you," he whispered.

"I'm fine now," she assured him. "But…"

He looked down at their child, then immediately back at her with worry. "Is he healthy? Are you—?"

Mei Xing bit her lip, and for a moment, Tai Lung saw the all-too familiar fear that she had disappointed him…it was faint, now, but still there. "It's a girl," she said, her voice wavering a little.

Tai Lung looked down at the child—a daughter, _his_ daughter—and took only a moment to think about it.

"Mei Xing," he said. "I don't care." He smiled at her stunned expression. "I don't care. I just spent a month at the mercy of a psychotic kung fu master, I spent another month being hunted down by a sadistic army officer, and I just survived a battle with the single most dangerous foe I've ever faced. All that considered, and I come home to find that not only is the love of my life alive and well, but that we now have a healthy child…boy or girl, damn it, Mei, I couldn't be happier!"

She finally smiled, her face breaking with relief as fresh tears fell. She was hardly alone; he was crying just as much as she was. He didn't care anymore. He didn't give a damn what people would think if they saw him now. As far as he was concerned, they could shove their opinions where the sun didn't shine. He was alive, as was his beloved wife, and their healthy baby girl.

The little cub made a noise, and he looked down to get a good first look at his daughter. She looked just like her mother, he noticed, like a miniature Mei Xing. The most striking thing about this child was her eyes; though they would not open for a couple weeks, the shape of the cub's eyes most definitely resembled her father's.

Mei Xing smiled and whispered, "She's got Daddy's eyes, doesn't she?"

"Yes, but she's got her Mummy's nose, and little cheeks," he grinned. The baby made a noise that he liked to pretend was a laugh. "Gods," he said breathlessly. "She's beautiful."

"Would you like to hold her?" his wife asked.

He balked. "Are you _mad_? When I'm covered in mud, blood, and gods only know what else?! I'm not touching my little girl until I'm disinfected!"

"But you were okay hugging your dad right after defeating Jiao Shen."

"That's different—it was my dad."

"He passed out, you know, during the birth."

"I know, Dalang just told me."

"Is it bad that I actually laughed when he passed out?"

"I figured you would, you saucy little thing," he said proudly.

She grinned and gently caressed the downy white fur on her daughter's head. "We'll need to think of names, now. I don't want to wait the hundred days until the naming ceremony, you know?"

"Damn, that's right," he groaned. "No reason we can't start throwing ideas around… She'll have to have '_mei_' somewhere in there…"

"Why '_mei_'?"

"Because she's gorgeous, just like her mum, of course," he said with a chuckle, lovingly caressing his wife's cheek. "But what do you think about…Mei Jun? Mei Yue? What about Mei Jia, or Mei Ling?"

"Honey," Mei Xing said quickly. "Let's not worry about it right now. I don't want to tempt fate or anything…"

"Fine, fine…" he sighed, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind to make a final decision anyway."

"Which reminds me," his wife said. "What happened to that guy you and Po were supposed to take down?"

Her husband's uncomfortable silence didn't sit well with her.

"Tai Lung, is Koshchei dead?"

Tai Lung took a deep breath as he prepared to tell the entirely of his two-month long journey…and also what had just occurred in the village square. Rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably, he gnawed on his bloodied lip and began, "Well…yes and no…"

* * *

"That's not him. There's no way."

"Well, the eyes are a little different, but apparently—_technically_—it's him."

"Well damn, _now_ I've seen everything."

The Wu Sisters were settled in the nursery, the only place where they wouldn't be in the way, looking over the baby Amur leopard…with mixed feelings.

"At least he's a lot cuter than the old guy…" Wu Zhu said, always trying to be cheerful.

"But technically," her sister Jiang said, making a face when Zhu started playing peek-a-boo with the baby, "It _is_ him."

"But he's just so…aw hell, he's just so damn _cute_!"

"Zhu," her older sister Tian scolded. "You are talking about _Asmodei Koshchei_, here."

"Aw, but look!" the blue-eyed snow leopardess said, holding the newborn up. "See? His eyes aren't even blue—they're a pretty honey-color."

"Looks more like amber in this light," Jiang said.

"Maybe they're hazel?" Zhu wondered.

"It doesn't matter what damn color his eyes are!" Tian snapped. "We are talking about a completely mentally unstable despot that somehow got shrunk down into a peeing, pooping, puking gremlin…or, in layman's terms, a baby."

"And people _wonder_ why you never got married," said Jiang.

"Say what you want," Zhu sniffed. "I think he's adorable. 'Inn't that right?" she asked the baby, and began making faces and using baby talk to him. The baby leopard just stared back at her with an expression that bore resemblance to the shocked and somewhat disturbed looks her sisters were giving her. "Whooza cutest wittle bay-bee?" Zhu cooed as she tickled under his chin. "Whooza cutest? _You_ are, _yes_ you are, yes you—_OW_!" She looked over her shoulder in the direction whence the toy block had been thrown at her head. Baby Shang looked back at her with a perfectly reasonable, innocent face as he sucked on his thumb…amidst a pile of wooden blocks.

Zhu glared. "I'm watching you, kid."

"Zhu, he's less than a year old," Jiang pointed out. "What damage could he possibly—"

Zhu interrupted, "He is the son of Master Tigress and Jiao Dalang. He's _Tigress's_ kid, remember?"

"Point taken."

"Uh…hey, relevant question?"

The sisters looked up and over to the corner of the room where Lan Duo sat slumped against the wall. The wolf looked between them and the two infants and asked, "Isn't anyone else concerned that they just _left_ us in here with their kids?"

"The only one that's theirs is the tiger…and for some weird reason, I don't think his parents are the ones who should be worried," Tian said with an uncertain look sent in Shang's direction. "Because if this cub here _is_ Koshchei, we've got quite a problem."

"What's the problem?" Zhu asked. "He's a baby now."

"And risks growing into a monster all over again," Tian pointed out. "That's probably what they're talking about down there, the other masters," she said, pointing down to the first floor. "They're deciding what to do with this baby. And given what horrible things he did," Tian said coldly, sending an equally frigid look towards the leopard cub, "It would be the best if we just left him on the side of a mountain—"

"WHAT?" Zhu snapped, holding the baby against her chest. "How can you say that?! Tian, he's an innocent little baby! He's never hurt anyone—"

"Who would give him a chance to, knowing what he's been?" Tian demanded. "I told you we should've killed Koshchei when we had the chance, and this _is_ our chance. We can rid the world of him for good."

"Could you live with yourself?"

Tian whirled on Duo, returning his glare. "Excuse me?"

The wolf repeated himself: "Could you live with yourself? If you killed him, as he is, right now…could you be able to live with that? Could you sleep at night knowing you turned your back on your own morals by killing a baby?"

"That _thing_ is _not_ a baby," Tian hissed. "You saw the things he did, you even helped him along the way! Jiao Dalang would agree with me, and I know it—for the good of China, that leopard needs to die."

"No," said Duo, stepping between her and the leopard cub. The other two sisters had gone rigidly still, and baby Shang had stopped playing to watch the adults very carefully.

"Move aside, _wolf_," Tian hissed, drawing out her claws. "This is for the greater good."

"I won't let you."

"Don't do this, Duo," she warned. "Because we both know I'll take you down with him."

"Then go ahead." And now Duo did something that shocked every feline in the room. He bent down and carefully took the baby leopard from Zhu's arms. He held the child against his chest, gently rocking him when the cub began to cry. When the wolf glared back at Tian, he growled, "Go ahead and kill us both. According to your logic, it's what we deserve. I know it's what _I_ deserve."

"But..."

"And don't you even _dare_ try to justify my actions. I did wrong, and I deserve to pay for it." He looked down into the baby's round face, frowning when he started to cry louder. "Tai Lung defeated Koshchei with something he called the Phoenix Tear technique. He said the technique erases all the darkness left in a person, and once that darkness is gone, it leaves only what is left over…and what was 'left over' is this little guy," he said, indicating the baby. "And if the gods can find a way to give someone like Koshchei a second chance…"

He choked on his own words, eyes tearing up a bit. The baby leopard had stopped crying long enough to look up at the canine holding him with an inquisitive, trusting gaze. Duo gained control of himself, and finished, "If the gods can give _him_ a second chance…then maybe there's hope for me, too."

The sisters were visibly affected, even though Zhu was the only one who started to cry. Jiang reached out and laid her hand on Duo's shoulder, but was speechless.

"Well, isn't this a ray of sunshine?" Auntie Wu said. She was cleaning up from the birth, depositing bloodied rags in a basket for washing. "You'd be surprised, dear," she said to Duo, "The gods are mighty forgiving of a lot of things."

"Just the gods?" Tian dared to ask.

Wu Lien looked up at her eldest, fixing her with her shrewd stare. "Among others...given the right circumstances." She picked up the basket and left the younger warriors alone, taking the washing downstairs. This was where she found both Mr. Ping and Shifu frantically trying to revive a near comatose Sonam.

"Try the smelling salts," the goose suggested.

"We already did that, he's _out_," said the red panda.

"Well try it again! Maybe it'll work."

"Just give him some wine," Wu said, "Or some of that awful 'vodka' stuff Dalang likes; that should fix him right up."

Shifu looked at his wife. "You don't seem worried about him."

"It's because I'm not. This isn't the first time he's passed out. Nima was the one who gave birth, and who do you think needed more medical care when it was over? Not the mother or the baby, I'll tell you that!"

Sonam finally groaned and tried opening his eyes. "Please don't tell that bloody story again..."

Wu grinned wickedly. "Well, it's funny you mention blood..."

"Oh stop, have some mercy on the poor man," Mr. Ping pleaded. "Having him laying out like this on my nice clean floor gets in the way of noodle-making!"

"Thanks, Ping," Sonam said, "Your concern makes me feel _much_ better."

"What about you?" Wu said, handing Shifu the bottle of plum wine. "Fancy a nip, handsome? You were looking a little pale back there yourself. I thought I was going to have two old men faint on me."

Shifu coughed, but accepted the bottle and poured two glasses: one for Sonam, and one for himself. "I'm better than I was...I was surprised by all the...ahem, blood."

"Yes, it's a main reason why I usually never allow men in the birthing room. Mei Xing held her own, though, and I'm proud of her."

"Certainly helped having Dalang and that wolf to help keep her calm...though I think Su Lin may have to look at the wolf's hand; Mei Xing may have broken it during the contractions."

"Oh he's fine, there's no bruising. I rather give him credit: he seemed to know enough about childbirth to be a decent assistant for me." She was surprised that Shifu only took two sips and handed the rest of the wine to her. Unlike her husband, however, she took the whole glass and downed it in a matter of seconds.

Wu Lien allowed Shifu to pull her into a hug, both red pandas delighted and relieved, but certainly not as delighted or relieved as the new parents celebrating in the room above their heads. They stood there, watching Mr. Ping working around Sonam, who was slowly regaining color in his face, and Shifu suddenly asked, "Weren't we fighting about something?"

Wu turned to him, a thoughtful look on her face. "We were...but what was it about?"

"We didn't speak for a full week, so it had to be something..." Shifu was cut off when they heard the baby made a cooing sound upstairs.

Wu answered for the both of them: "Oh, who cares?"

Shifu smiled, silently agreeing, and hugged her tighter. Then he asked, "Will we ever tell Tai Lung about Mei taking up the crossbow to fend off an attack right after having the girl?"

"Of course not. Mama didn't raise a fool."

* * *

Sunset came quickly at the Thread of Hope. Wind swept across the barren landscape in front of the sitting panda, but the Dragon Warrior showed no reaction to the frigid wind and rapidly falling temperature. The sun sank deeper and deeper on the horizon. Without opening his eyes, the Dragon Warrior stood with a fluidity that he had never shown before. Silently, he waited for the last blazing red of the sun's disk to dip below the horizon before he took a deep breath. Whatever happened, he would not hold any guilt. He had given them the chance to make it across. Their fates were in Heaven's hands now.

He let out the breath he had taken in. Pausing, pressing his palms together, he took in another deep breath, and stamped one foot down, then the other, and pushing both hands, palms down to the earth. The earth trembled again, shuddered violently. Pine needles from the trees around him shook and dropped needles in a shower blanketing the snow in green.

Then before him, the ground gave out, falling out like a roof giving way. Rocks and debris went into free fall and tumbled deep into the freshly formed Devil's Mouth.

As suddenly as it began, the earth ceased trembling, and the golden light that had entered the panda in the morning shot out of him in a beam of light straight across the chasm, chasing the sun behind the distant mountains.

Po felt his legs weaken, and he collapsed on all fours, panting, breath turning to fog in front of his face. The panda's vision blurred. He blinked several times, shook his head to clear the fog that had suddenly descended on him. But it did little good.

He was too weak to move, he realized. He needed to rest, but he knew if he did, he would surely freeze. He struggled to stand, plodded through the snow and grabbed as many fallen branches as he could to make a fire. Once he was safely out of the wind, kindling by his side, he leaned his back against a pine tree, sighed, and gave into his fatigue.

Oogway was by his side almost as soon as he lost consciousness.

"Can you deliver a message for me?" Po asked him.

"Of course."

"Can you tell Tai that I need his help? I don't think I can make it back alone."

Oogway only smiled. "I would be happy to. Rest, Dragon Warrior, you've earned it."

"What about the cold?"

"Don't you remember? You have friends on this side looking out for you."

Po smiled. "That's right. Thanks."

"Thank _you_. I will be back to keep an eye on you soon enough. Just give me a few minutes..."

* * *

Mei Xing was finally asleep, as was the baby. Tai Lung, however, couldn't sleep. He was exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally, had little to no time to come to terms with everything that had happened in the last two months. But perhaps that was why he couldn't sleep now. His mind was racing, images flashing by, glimpses of things he had seen and things he had imagined, like he was unable to focus on just one dream. There was so much to think about, so much to go over. Sun Bear, the battle, his new status as a legendary warrior, and even newer status as a father...

He gave up on sleep and crept over to the cradle, kneeling down next to it. He gently pulled the blanket down from around his daughter's—his daughter!—slumbering face. She was so tiny, so fragile, and she was his. His future, his responsibility, his...he didn't want to think of it right now. Here she was, though, finally, his little girl, this little stranger in their lives. He had a family now. A good and proper family.

As he watched his daughter sleep, he finally realized what was bothering him so much.

He got up and tiptoed out of the room, gently closing the door behind him.

He wasn't the only one up at that late hour.

"Tigress? What are you doing up?"

Master Tigress looked over at him, tearing her eyes away from the candle she had been staring at. She sat in the lotus position on the floor, as if she was trying to meditate, but her posture was all wrong. It didn't take a philosopher to know something was bothering her. "I...I couldn't sleep," she said. "I don't know why; I just couldn't get my mind to shut off."

"Po's not back yet," he said.

She straightened at this. Her eyes were wide. "You think something's wrong."

He nodded. "He shouldn't have taken this long. I'm going after him."

"I'm coming too."

"I thought you might."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked as she stood, suddenly defensive.

Tai Lung stared at her. "It just means you care about him, as much as I do. You're worried and I'm worried."

She thought about this, then said, "I'm going to bring the others. Crane, Viper, Monkey and Mantis are all here."

"Still?"

"They were too tired to make it back up to the palace tonight; looks like they'll have to wait another night..."

"Good; the more the merrier, we may need all the help we can get."

Tigress quickly roused them (they had taken up room in the as-yet unused nursery) and, unanimously worried, wakened fully, bundled up, and headed out into the wintry darkness after the Dragon Warrior.

* * *

Everything hurt. Every inch of him. He had felt cold at first, then numb, then nothing at all. Only blackness. He wondered if this was what dying was like, if perhaps what everyone thought awaited them after death was actually no heaven, no hell, just nothingness. If that were the case, he would have preferred hell to the nothingness.

But now he was in total agony. His body and skin burned from the bones to the tips of every hair on his body.

With a great gasp he opened his eyes and sat up, coming awake. He was in his old bed, in his father's house, and – to his great relief – very much alive.

Po let out a sigh and laid back against the pillows, taking everything in. Su Lin had made some changes to the décor, but he found it sweet she left his drawings on the walls. But overall, he liked the changes. They took his mind off the pain he was in.

"Lemme help ya with that, big guy."

Po felt a tiny pinch in his arm, then relief flooded through his body. He sighed again and turned his head. "Thanks, Mantis. What'd you give me?"

"Just a little painkiller, enough so you're not screaming again."

"What d'ya mean, Again?"

Mantis hopped down off the bed and onto the bedpost so Po could see him. "Yeah, when we found you, you were sitting in lotus position by the Thread of Hope or, uh, what _was_ the Thread of hope...and then...well, see..."

"I raised the earth to meet the sky," Po said, though he had no idea where the words came from, "And then once the heavens met the earth, the earth fell back again."

Mantis likewise had no idea where this had come from. Rather than question it, he simply asked, "We got a whole house full of people wanting to see if you're okay. You up for some company?"

Po raised himself up on his elbows with some difficulty. "Yeah, definitely."

The first in the room was Mr. Ping, who wrapped his wings as far around his son as he could manage. He was followed closely by the Furious Five, Tai Lung, and Shifu. Any more people would have crowded the already tiny room, but rather than claustrophobic, Po felt glad for their company.

"How are you feeling?" Viper asked.

"Been better," he admitted. "How did the rest of the battle go?"

"Most of the stragglers were taken into custody," Tigress said. "Others we killed outright." She softened up to see the panda's expression. "They didn't give us much choice."

"There's always a choice," the Dragon Warrior said.

"No," Monkey said, "She means the villagers. A few of them kind of...well..." the simian left it at that.

"They performed magnificently," Shifu admitted, "Greater valor than I ever expected. They all should be proud. _You_ all should be proud. The Valley of Peace is safe once again..."

"Though we really ought to consider giving it a new name at this rate," Tai Lung quipped.

A few of the warriors chuckled at the long-running joke. Po laughed more than he should have, then fell exhausted back into the pillows. Tai Lung came forward and helped Mr. Ping put another couple pillows behind the Dragon Warrior's back. "What happened to me?" Po asked him.

"My guess?" the snow leopard asked. "Probably the same thing that happened to me: whatever you did at the Thread of Hope must have used up a lot of your chi. You were near death when we found you."

"We?"

"All of us," Crane explained, his bandaged wing in a sling. "We all came looking for you when you didn't come home right away. I mean, with the snowstorm and everything..."

"How did you manage on your broken wing?" Po asked.

Crane sheepishly replied, "Well, I almost didn't go. Mother demanded I stay."

"So you defied her? Awesome."

"Um, no...Viper did."

Viper blushed, but said nothing.

"You shouldn't be embarrassed," Tigress said with a smirk, "If she were my mother-in-law, I would've said worse."

"Wow," Po said. "What did you actually say to her?"

"Nothing I should repeat..." the serpent said guiltily.

"Are you hungry, son?" Mr. Ping asked. "I can send up some noodles, or Dalang can whip something up..."

"Where's Su Lin?" he asked.

"At the hospital. She's fine!" the goose said, placating his son's sudden alarm. "She's on call, helping the injured."

"She was something else, I gotta say," Mantis said. "Running headlong into battle like that, dodging arrows, throwing back as many punches as she got, all to get the wounded out of the way..."

Po gaped. "_Su Lin_ did this?"

Tigress smiled proudly. "She's got a lot more moxie than I gave her credit for. You're a lucky man."

Po eased back into the pillows some more. "This is a lot to take in..."

Mr. Ping patted his arm. "I'll send some food up. For now, you should get some rest. Everyone, let's give him some space."

"I'll be right down," Shifu said, "There's something I wish to discuss with Po and Tai Lung."

The others excused themselves, giving their well wishes to the Dragon Warrior before Shifu closed the door behind them. "Now," the red panda said, "I want to be sure I understand everything that happened. Asmodei Koshchei?"

"Defeated," Tai Lung answered.

"You're sure."

"Positive."

"Good." Shifu let out a relieved sigh and turned to Po. "The Thread of Hope..."

"Yeah, long story short," Po said, "Master Sun Bear, at the Phoenix Temple, told us that Oogway used a forgotten kung fu move to create the chasm; I used the reverse to raise the earth to the same level so the outlaws could get away...then I set it right again."

The red panda was silent for a moment, then shook his head. "I knew Master Oogway was powerful, but I had no idea..."

"He was the original Dragon Warrior."

Shifu stared at the panda, aghast; his shock intensified when Tai Lung added, "Sun Bear was the original Phoenix Warrior. He bestowed the Phoenix Scroll to me before we left. He passed away not long before we made the return journey. I learned the secret of the Phoenix Scroll, and used it to defeat Koshchei."

"There was a horse..."

"Zang Deshi, yes, we met him. Friends of ours took care of him..."

"You know," Po said, holding up his hands. "Maybe we should start from the beginning. From when we got to the Phoenix Temple to here. Just so we don't confuse each other."

"Good plan," Shifu said. "But before we continue, I just have to ask..." he turned to Tai Lung. "Just what is the secret of the Phoenix Scroll? What secret could be so powerful as to defeat such evil?"

Tai Lung just smiled, and produced the Phoenix Scroll from within his robes. He unrolled it, and showed it to both pandas. It was very similar to the Dragon Scroll, except that it wasn't blank. Instead, smack dab in the middle of the parchment, was a single character:

_Forgive._

"...Where's the rest of it?" Po was the first to ask.

"That's it," the snow leopard said.

"How could that be it?" Shifu asked.

"Second chances," Tai Lung answered. "That was the whole point of the Phoenix Temple, to give people a second chance, to rise from the ashes of their own destruction and become a new person. It's not easy to forgive someone who hurt you, or who did great wrong to you, but it's even harder to forgive yourself. That's what the scroll means. I wanted to make a complete turnaround, but I couldn't, as long as I held on to the past. So I let it go. I forgave the people who hurt me, and I forgave myself for the terrible things I did."

"How's that feel?" Po asked.

"Brilliant. It feels ruddy brilliant," the snow leopard said with a grin.

Shifu also smiled, resting a paternal hand on Tai Lung's arm. "Well, I for one am happy you have finally found inner peace. Now..." he turned to Po, "About Oogway and Sun Bear being the original warriors..."

Po and Tai Lung shared a look before both began explaining the whole story: the journey there, the hierarchy at the temple, the revelations from the late master of the temple, especially the story of the magical spring, and ultimately Sun Bear's sacrifice. Shifu noted how quiet Tai Lung got at this point; he relied on Po to tell this part of the tale.

Then they got into explaining about Altai, visiting Mei Xing's family, Little Brother's origins, and the sudden appearance of Lan Duo into their group.

"Ah, yes, I had wondered about him. He doesn't seem the type to..."

"Yes, well," Tai Lung said, "Neither was I. Call me crazy, but I saw part of myself in him. And, by the by, he was able to wield the Golden Spear."

The red panda froze, slowly turned to look at his foster son. "The Golden Spear? The spear that is supposed to turn the unworthy to ashes when they touch it?"

"Yup," Po said with a smile. "Guess if the spear thinks he's worthy...he probably is."

"So I shouldn't be worried that he's been protecting that child? Where did that baby leopard come from anyway?"

Dragon Warrior and Phoenix Warrior shared a look before Po asked, "You wanna tell him, or shall I?"

"You do it; just give me time to leave the room. He won't try and hurt you, as you're already hurt."

"I thought you said Koshchei was dead?" Shifu asked, unable to mask the accusation.

Po pursed his lips and hemmed and hawed as Tai Lung high-tailed it out of the room. "Well...yes and no."

* * *

The last thing he remembered was the snow leopard slamming a palm on his chest, and the other on his forehead. The next thing he knew, he was in this place of darkness and mist. Fog so thick he could barely see his own whiskers in front of his face, he stumbled along blindly, tripping on unseen rocks and roots.

He tripped again, and fell flat on his face. This time, however, the ground shuddered beneath him and to his horror, the fog lifted enough to show two skeletal hands shooting up out of the ground and wrapping around his wrists. He panicked, jerking his arms and frantically kicking his feet until he felt two more hands wrap around his ankles. He was pulled upright to his knees, arms held down. The skeletal hands gripping his wrists moved through the earth in an arch, bringing his arms behind him and binding him to the ground. The harder he struggled, the tighter the hands gripped him.

Out of the mist came four walls that surrounded him, a cage of bones that materialized from out of nowhere, and before him, a raised platform where five individuals sat. The one in the middle he knew only from pilfered temple art he had desecrated once.

That's how Asmodei Koshchei knew he was in Hell.

The Lord of the Dead, whom the Buddhists called King Yama, but called Yanluo Wang by the Chinese, sat on a cushion with the other judges, neither of them looked happy to see the Amur leopard. Directly to Yanluo Wang's left sat a raven; to his direct right, a grizzled wolf. On either end of the platform sat an aged tortoise and similarly elderly bear. Yanluo Wang held up a scroll in one hand which he handed to the lupine judge on his right. In the king's other hand was a skull of indeterminate species, which he banged down on a low table in front of him as a gavel.

"This court is now in session. Aleksei Kasparov, alias Asmodei Koshchei, you stand in judgment before this tribunal. Your life has been recorded," the Lord of the Dead said, indicating the scroll in the right-hand judge's skeletal claws, "We have seen souls that have committed truly despicable acts over the centuries, but your crimes and sins are particularly abhorrent. Before we pass judgment, have you anything to say in your defense?"

It took a moment for Koshchei to find his voice, and when he did, he was amazed that it had no trace of his northern accent, and he was perfectly capable of understanding and responding to this king.

"In my defense? How can you judge me, seeing how I was treated?!" he shouted. "Those people deserved everything they got, and I could have done worse to them. I _should_ have done worse to them!"

"So you show no remorse whatsoever?" the raven judge asked.

Koshchei spit on the ground. "None! This court isn't even real. This is a hallucination. That snow leopard didn't kill me, he doesn't have the nerve!"

"You're right," said the bear to his far left. A bear wrapped in saffron yellow robes, who seemed oddly familiar, but where the leopard had previously met him, he couldn't say. The bear continued, fixing his steely-eyed glare on the leopard. "He banished you. He sent you here. You're also not truly dead. Not yet, at any rate."

"So you don't have any jurisdiction over me!" the leopard countered. "I've been in enough courts, I know how this works…"

"How _mortal_ courts work, yes, but you see, the trouble with courts of the gods," Yanluo Wang said with a smoldering glare, "Is that we have already passed judgment. The only choice to be made is what punishment you face."

Now Koshchei felt another chill, but this had nothing to do with the Lord of the Dead's words. He felt a presence next to him, then another, and another, and then he was surrounded. He chanced a look over and felt dread fill his body. Jiao Shen stood to one side of him, and the tiger looked much stronger than the last time the leopard had seen him, haunting his nightmares. Then, to his immense shock, Ming Hua materialized in front of him. She did not look happy to see him, either.

"You are the only witnesses?" Yanluo asked.

"I am the only witness for the defense, Lord Yama," Ming Hua answered. "The others are the prosecution."

"Others?" Koshchei asked before he followed Shen's gaze and looked over his shoulder. His heart and any hope he had sank into the dust. The witnesses for the prosecution were all the people he had ever killed, all the people he had ever tortured. He had, as a rule, never kept count of the numbers, but now truly wondered how many hundreds he had destroyed, for there were at least that many.

Yanluo Wang did not look impressed with the multitude of victims, and he fixed his gaze on the tigress in front of him. "You speak in defense of this man? _This_ man, here?"

"No. I speak on behalf of his mortal body," Ming Hua said. "As was discussed, no harm must come to it. We made a deal, and it is imperative both of us keep our word."

"You don't need to remind me about a god's word. A god's word is sacred, and must not be broken," the king said shortly. Ming Hua didn't flinch. Koshchei could see Shen twitch and make movements as if he intended to come to his former wife's defense, but kept his composure.

"You used to be so strong," Koshchei hissed at him, "What happened to you?"

Shen's expression hardened, but he didn't answer.

"The evidence against you is great," the king said to the leopard. "And given the enormity and savagery of your sins, and the lack of remorse, we sentence you to death."

Koshchei laughed. "Aren't I already dead?"

"Explain it to him," the Lord of the Dead ordered Shen.

Jiao Shen nodded once and turned to his former friend and confidante, his dark eyes blazing. "Your body and soul have been torn asunder. Your body has been destroyed and remade into another form, and another soul now resides in it, a soul that this court determined deserved a second chance. You are out of chances.

"You are worse off than a ghost with a corpse in a grave. The only chance you had, if you repented, was reincarnation into another body; owing to the bad karma you acquired in your life, your new life would have been miserable, horrible, and, if you were lucky, short. But you didn't repent, you didn't show remorse, and there is only one punishment in Hell that is reserved for someone like you…"

Shen paused and spoke the next words so calmly, so coldly, it made Koshchei shiver to his core:

"Total and complete annihilation. Your body ceases to exist, you soul ceases to exist, _you_ cease to exist, and nothing will ever bring you back. Only the most evil of souls are annihilated, so as to ensure they never walk Earth again. And once you're gone, you're gone forever. Done. No heaven, no hell, no eternal peace nor eternal agony. Just…nothing."

To Koshchei, it didn't sound that bad, as it sure beat being burned alive for eternity. No pain, no agony, who wouldn't want that? But there was more to it than that.

"Bring them in," Yanluo Wang said. Suddenly Koshchei was aware that the spirits of his victims had huddled around him. He recognized them all. His family, Sonya, Shen's other sons (who all looked remarkably healthy, despite being where they were), and all the magistrates and nobles and nameless peasants and countless soldiers the leopard had killed and tortured over the years. He even saw the man he had buried alive in that chest – his fingers were worn down to the first knuckle from trying to claw his way out before he died. They all glared at him with dead, dark eyes.

Koshchei felt the skeletal hands holding him down loosen their grip and sink back into the ground. Though he was free, he couldn't move. He knew what was coming, but he was hoping he was wrong.

He wasn't.

"Are the executioners ready?" asked the Lord of the Dead.

As a group, all of Koshchei's victims nodded silently.

Yanluo Wang raised his skull gavel and brought it down hard against the table. "Proceed."

Sonya was the first to step forward, the slash at her neck still gushing blood. "_I've been waiting for this for years…_" she said in Russian.

And suddenly they were upon him, all of them, claws digging into his side, ripping at his clothes, fur, and flesh. Pain he had never felt and never thought possible burned across his body and he could feel them tugging at his limbs, at his tail, his whiskers, his nose and ears. He could feel his organs being stretched thin, slowly tearing like a cotton sheet, thread by agonizing thread until ripped apart. His whole body stretched in hundreds of different directions and he knew it was coming, but before it was over, he let out one last, long, piercing agonized scream.

Like vultures swarming over a carcass, Koshchei's victims descended on him until the scream slowly faded, piling on top of him, one after the other, clawing and grabbing until Yanluo Wang slammed his skull gavel down once more. One by one, the vengeful ghosts climbed off each other, stepped away from the circle of death. Where once Asmodei Koshchei knelt, all that remained was a pile of ash and dust, which was picked up by the wind and scattered throughout all eighteen levels of Hell.

Thus ended the reign of terror that was Asmodei Koshchei.

* * *

Ming Hua had turned away from the carnage, closing her eyes and covering her ears against it. When she looked back, the ghosts of Koshchei's victims one by one disappeared until only her sons' spirits and her husband's remained. Across the court, her eyes locked with her husband's; to her surprise, he gave her a thin, yet hopeful smile. It was the same smile he'd always had: like it hurt to curl his lips upward. Over time, Ming Hua came to appreciate that at least he _tried_ smiling.

"I believe we have one last piece of business," said the tortoise on the far left of Yanluo Wang. The Lord of the Death, surprisingly, smiled.

"Yes, old friend, I dare say we do. Jiao Family, step forward, and accept your judgment and subsequent fates."

"That's not what he meant," the bear at the end of the platform growled, even as a few of the Jiao moved a step forward. "He means the leopard's renewed body, and what will become of it. I believe my friend and I both had a hand in the child's fate."

"So you did," the Lord of the Dead agreed, clearly unhappy that his duties were interrupted. "But you still haven't answered the question of how the child will be raised."

"I have thought of that," the tortoise said and stood. The bear likewise stood and followed his friend.

Ming Hua stepped aside for Master Oogway and Master Sun Bear, who, together, drew a circle in the dust with their claws. When the circle was complete, a bright light emitted from it, and swirled like water in a pool. Before the judges and witnesses, they opened upon an unexpected scene…

* * *

"Annnndd…go!"

In the pool, they saw Lan Duo frantically pull together a diaper, wipes, and powder, and quickly change the baby leopard's diaper. Wu Jiang kept time and called it as soon as the wolf fastened the diaper on the infant. "Time!" he said.

"New record," she smiled.

The wolf pumped his fists in the air. "Yes! You and I, we got something going here," he said to the baby, who just stared back at him. The baby leopard blinked once. "Yeah, exactly. You think I've completely lost my mind," Duo said.

"Look on the bright side," Jiang said, "you're better at changing diapers than any man I've ever met."

"That's…not very encouraging."

"Aww, what's the matter, is that a blow to your masculinity?"

"Kinda, yeah."

"Oh man up, single dads are sexy."

He arched a brow at her. "Really now?"

* * *

Yanluo Wang bellowed at the two deceased kung fu masters. "You're kidding. _Him_?!"

"Him," Oogway said simply, with a knowing smile. Sun Bear seemed to share his amusement, but on his craggy features, his smile looked more like a smirk. "You'll see. There is a very good reason we chose Lan Duo to raise that child."

Sun Bear swirled the water in the pool and when the water settled again, it came upon a scene in the courtyard of the restaurant, where the masters Ox and Croc, Furious Five, and residents of the Long and Feng sat in debate.

* * *

"…really intense battle," finished Master Ox. "We could just say the baby was an orphan that was abandoned."

"And leave it at the orphanage?" Master Tigress countered. "Unacceptable. I know how hard it is for an apex predator to be adopted by peace-loving farmers. And something tells me none of you masters wants to adopt him and raise him with kung fu."

The courtyard fell silent.

"Look," Master Croc sighed. "Should we really be discussing this now? There are more pressing matters. Such as rebuilding the village."

"No kidding," Mantis said. "Half the Eastern Quarter is burned to the ground."

"All those people without a place to stay," Viper said. "And winter's here."

"I have already taken care of that," Shifu announced. "All displaced villagers are free to live at the Jade Palace until their homes are rebuilt. The Jade Palace's dormitories have enough space. My wife Lotus has offered her dormitories as well. Now, speaking of burned out…" Shifu said, looking at Po and Tai Lung, "What exactly happened back there? If what you told me earlier is true, is that baby really Asmodei Koshchei?"

Po and Tai Lung shared a look, then shrugged at each other. "How's this," Po offered. "We just say 'yes and no', and leave it at that?"

"Not good enough," Dalang suddenly growled. "If that thing is Koshchei, I want it gone."

"That _thing_?" Tai Lung asked, frowning. "That _thing_ is a _baby_, Dalang."

"You didn't answer my question, Tai Lung," the tiger growled. "Is that Koshchei?"

"He _was_ Koshchei."

"So the answer is yes."

"The answer is 'yes, but not anymore'."

Po, thinking quickly, got in between them before their respective tempers got the better of them. "Guys, settle down. Let's think about this a second. Take this apple, for example," he said, plucking a shiny red apple from the fruit bowl on the counter. "See, it's got bruises and it's a little mushy in places, and you definitely don't want to eat it…"

"So I throw it out, I get it," Dalang said impatiently.

"No, you don't. Now shut up and pay attention." Po tossed the apple in the air, gave a quick chop of his hand, and sliced the apple in half. Deftly catching both halves, he showed one the half to the tiger, and he pointed, "These are the apple seeds. Now, you take the seeds out of a bad apple, does that mean the seeds will make more bad apples?"

"No," Shifu said, smiling proudly, thinking of a similar conversation he'd had just a few years before with a certain tortoise… "The apple may not fall far from the tree, but the seeds can go anywhere, be planted anywhere, and as long as they are nurtured and cared for, those seeds will become healthy apple trees."

Po grinned and nodded. "Yeah! See, Shifu's got it!" He dug a single apple seed out of the slice and placed it in Dalang's hand. "Your dad was a bad apple. You are a _good_ apple. And as long as you are his daddy, _Shang_ is a good apple. An apple seed is hard, which means that no matter how bad the apple was, its badness doesn't hurt the seed. See what I'm saying?"

For a moment, a look of recognition crossed the tiger's face, but he quickly suppressed whatever he had been thinking about and let the seed fall from his hand. "We're not talking about a seed, Po, we're talking about…how did Tian put it?"

"A maniacal, completely mentally unstable despot that somehow got shrunk down into a peeing, pooping, puking gremlin," Wu Lien affirmed.

"Yeah, that."

Tai Lung gave him a flat look. "Father of the year, you are."

"And you're also completely missing my point," Po said with a deep frown. "When Shang was born, did you think about all the bad stuff his soul might've done in a past life?"

"Of course not," the tiger said. "But—"

Po cut him off. "You thought about all the _good_ things he was now capable of," he paused. "You thought of all the opportunities he had. You dreamed of what he would accomplish, and that he'd grow to be a man you could be proud to call your son. When a baby is born, no one thinks about what he or she did or said in a past life, they think about _this_ life, the life in _front_ of them. A new birth is a new beginning; a new birth means a new _life_, and a completely different person. So, to answer your question, no, that baby is not Asmodei Koshchei…he is Aleksei Kasparov. This is Aleksei's second chance to get the life he deserved from the day he was born…and he was born the day Koshchei died."

Dalang hesitated, looking concerned…and hurt. "His name was Aleksei? He never told me that."

Tai Lung cleared his throat and explained, "By the time he met you, Aleksei had been dead a long time. Koshchei had killed that part of himself after he killed his family. That's how the Phoenix Tear technique works—to dissolve the threat, it erases all the evil inside it. I thought there was at least a little good left in the man…but it looks like he really was rotten to the core."

"And what's in a core…?" Po hinted, pointing at the apple half.

Dalang paused before answering, "The…seeds?"

"Praise the gods, he _can_ be taught!" Po whooped.

"But it's impossible," Dalang argued. "That baby was not 'born'; it came from a destroyed man. People can only be 'born' by a mother giving birth to them—and for the last time, a baby and a seed are not the same—"

Shifu, having finally lost his patience, snapped at him, "It's a _parable_, you idiot, it's not supposed to be _literal_!"

* * *

Viewing from above, Yanluo Wang gave Oogway a rare compliment: "I admit, you made an excellent choice in successor."

"Why thank you," the tortoise said, "I like to think so as well."

"But you still haven't proved why this Lan Duo should raise the leopard."

"We're getting to that," Sun Bear growled. "Be patient."

Oogway cast a glance at his friend and asked, "You're not going to control him, are you?"

Sun Bear looked hurt by the accusation as he looked at Tai Lung's image. "Control? Oh no, never. He just needs…a little hint, a little push in the right direction…"

* * *

"Look, I don't care what anyone says," Dalang snarled. "I don't want that thing growing up under my roof."

"For the last time—" Tai Lung rose to fight back, but Po put a calming hand on the snow leopard's shoulder. Then the snow leopard had a sudden urge…and blurted out, "All right. Fine. You don't want it here, then throw it out on the street. Right now."

The rest of the courtyard sat in stunned silence, staring in horror at the snow leopard, who suddenly wondered where in the hell that came from. "Come on, then," he said as he stood, wondering why he was even standing, and what the hell he was doing. "Let's all go and throw the child out in the cold. Come along, everyone."

Horrified, Shifu, Dalang, Po and Masters Ox and Croc followed the snow leopard up the steps to the nursery, where they found Lan Duo with Jiang and the baby.

He found Lan Duo walking back and forth across the floor, trying to shush the baby leopard in his arms.

"Shh...oh c'mon, go to sleep...kid, please. I changed you, fed you, burped you...what do you want?"

Dalang, standing behind Tai Lung, couldn't stop himself: "He wants to be held."

Duo turned around and stared at the massive tiger and the masters crowding the doorway. The wolf held the infant closer to his chest, gently rocking him in his arms. "I tried not to make too much noise."

Tai Lung roughly shoved the tiger chef into the room, forcing him to confront the wolf. "It's fine," Dalang said.

"You're a really bad liar," the wolf shot back.

"And you're a lousy tipper, so let's call it even."

Duo rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. "Leave _one_ bad tip, and no one lets you forget it!"

Wolf and tiger stood there a moment longer, just staring at each other. The masters waited with bated breath, wondering what they were looking at, and what they were waiting for. The baby had quieted down, but Duo didn't like the silence any more than Dalang did.

"What're you going to do with it—him," Dalang quickly corrected himself.

"I think I'll take him—no one else seems to want him," the wolf said.

"So why do _you_ want him?"

"Honestly, no fuckin' clue."

"Did you even think about this before you decided?"

"Did you plan to be a father before it happened?"

"Yeah, actually."

Duo paused, then shrugged. "I dunno, I guess seeing what a monster Koshchei was...maybe I can keep history from repeating itself. Knowing what I know now about the guy, maybe he would've had a chance if he'd had a better upbringing."

"What kind of upbringing can a bandit and assassin give him?"

"The kind that says screw you..._ass_."

"You might wanna work on the language if you intend to be a father."

Duo scoffed. "What're you gonna do, install a swear jar?"

"'Might, never know."

"Sure."

They stood in silence for another long, tense moment. Duo looked down at the bundled baby in his arms, then leaned back against the wall, adjusting his hold so that the leopard cub was more comfortable. Glancing at the other masters, he felt compelled to explain, "I had a rough childhood. I figure, I coulda turned out worse, considering. I wanna turn my life around, not sure how to do that, though."

"What makes you think you can?" Master Ox asked.

"Tai Lung did," came the wolf's simplistic answer.

Everyone turned to stare at the snow leopard. Po shrugged, "Hey, guy's gotta point."

Dalang snapped, "He was a special case."

Duo fired back, "And you? Are you a special little snowflake, too?"

The tiger couldn't hold back; the fact this baby was still under his roof was bothering him more and more with each passing minute. He wanted it gone, and if that meant getting rid of the wolf, so be it. "I'm starting to see why Lang was such a bastard, having a teacher like you."

"Again, fuck you, Stripes." Duo then growled as Dalang took a step forward. His hackles rose and he bared his teeth, making the tiger chef stop short, and the other masters hold their breath. "I know what you're thinking," Duo hissed, "And if you take one step closer, I swear I'm gonna rip you apart."

"On what grounds?" the tiger growled.

It was what Duo said next that told everyone what kind of father the wolf would turn out to be:

"You touch one hair on this kid's head, and I'll end you. And I don't care if I die trying. _No one_ hurts this baby on my watch. Got it?!" By now his ears were flat against his head, lips pulled back into a vicious snarl. He meant it. He meant every word. "And so help me, if _any_ of you," he said with a glare towards the masters, from Ox to Croc to Shifu himself, "_ever_ make a move to hurt this baby, I will rip out your eyes and shove them so far down your throat you'll be able to watch me eviscerate you!"

"We're supposed to be afraid of you because you make such insolent threats against us?" Master Ox challenged.

"No," Duo said, looking very close to following through on every single threat if the bovine so much as coughed in his direction. "You're supposed to be afraid because if you hurt my kid, _you're_ not the one who's going to jail. _I'm_ the one who's going to jail. If you think I won't kill, or swing from a gallows, or lose my head for this kid, you got another thing coming!"

It was safe to say that everyone in that doorway knew from experience not to mess with a pissed-off wolf...and knew even better never to mess with an overprotective parent.

Po started to slowly ease everyone away from Duo. "Yeah...yeah, we got it. Loud and clear, right guys?"

Duo relaxed, though only a little. He still looked distrustfully at the tiger, but made his way towards a spare cradle. "The baby needs his sleep. If you wake him up, so help me..."

"Rage, death, evisceration, got it," the tiger quickly finished. "'Night!" And he closed the nursery door behind him. In the main room of the living quarters, Po, Tai Lung, Ox, Croc, Shifu and Dalang all stared at each other in amazement. The Furious Five, who had been unable to look into the nursery, but had heard every word, looked between each other, then around the room in absolute shock. After a long silence, Tai Lung spoke for all of them: "Well, I think that settles that."

What went unspoken, but was unanimously agreed upon, was that the baby leopard had a chance after all.

* * *

Yanluo Wang seemed to believe so as well. "Impressive. I should have had more faith in you, Oogway and Sun Bear. Lan Duo will be an excellent parent."

"Agreed," Ming Hua said. "And quite appropriate, given whose soul now inhabits the leopard's body."

"Indeed!" said Oogway. "I rather liked his idea of a family of omegas."

"And as agreed," Sun Bear said to the Lord of the Dead, "I will be Lan Duo's personal guardian."

"So noted," said Yanluo Wang, nodding to the grizzled wolf at his side, who wrote down the court proceedings for him, and the final decision. "Now then, shall we continue to the Jiao reassignments?"

"I have no objections," Oogway said, slowly returning to his seat.

"Neither have I," Sun Bear agreed. "Let's get this over with." He offered his seat to Ming Hua, who gently shook her head, looking between her husband and sons with a worried look.

The Lord of the Dead beckoned them forward. Each tiger stepped forward like men walking to their execution. Shen was the first to stop, drop to his knees and kowtow to the King. Surprised, his sons quickly followed suit.

Yanluo Wang opened a scroll and read out the names. "Chang and Ang, though you performed terrible things in your lifetimes, they paled in comparison to the deeds of your brothers. However, your karma weighed heavily. But in the interest of extenuating circumstances," the Lord of the Dead said with a glance towards Ming Hua, "This court has decided to reincarnate you as the daughters of a laborer. This way you will begin your new lives as you began your previous ones: together."

The twins breathed sighs of relief and smiled at each other. "Thank you, your Lordship," they chorused and bowed deeply again.

"Jiao Huang…given the amount of damage you did in your life, this court determined that you are to be reincarnated as an ant."

Huang's face fell immediately while his brothers winced around him.

Yanluo Wang glared at him. "Perhaps being on the receiving end of the same treatment you gave others might teach you some humility and compassion."

Huang's brothers all avoided looking at him, and Xiang especially looked like he was holding back something. The only reaction Shen gave was to close his eyes and sigh heavily.

"Jiao Xiang."

Xiang straightened up immediately.

"You are to be reincarnated as the second son of a country doctor. You could not be healed in your lifetime, but perhaps taking on your new father's profession will help save lives rather than destroy them."

It was clear the tiger couldn't believe his luck. "How? Why? After the things I did…"

"Then I suggest you become a damn good doctor to make up for it," the Lord of the Dead growled.

Xiang swallowed any other complaints and questions and bowed respectfully.

"Jiao Feng."

Feng gulped nervously. He felt even more nervous when he saw the god smile at him.

"In your life, you were jealous of your youngest brother. You even sought to remove him completely. However in death, you have made certain discoveries about your brother, such as that he always looked up to you, that he himself was jealous of your skill with a bow and arrow. You even came to his aide in a time of crisis. And, I believe, the reason you look so healthy now is due in part to your brother's gratitude for that aide. But tell me: was that shumai any good?"

Feng, confused, glanced down the line of his family members, then back at his mother. She was beaming back at him. Clearly bemused, the tiger replied, "Um…it was the best I ever had, your Lordship."

"Excellent. Given the guardianship role you have taken upon yourself for your brother and nephew, this court has determined you are to be reincarnated as the second son of Jiao Dalang…so you can have the relationship you were always meant to have with him."

"Not to mention," Oogway added, "more opportunities for shumai."

Feng was so shocked, his father had to close his dropped jaw for him. "Show some dignity," Shen hissed at him. "You're in the presence of a god."

"And speaking of," Yanluo Wang said, "We come to you, Shen."

The patriarch sat ramrod straight and held himself with dignity as he awaited his sentence. He wasn't expecting much…perhaps he could tolerate being reborn as a rabbit. Maybe. He hoped he wouldn't get Huang's fate. An ant? That was…rather harsh, even by Shen's standards. But he, like Feng, was pleasantly surprised when the Lord of the Dead said:

"There is a family of lions with three daughters who are desperate for a son. You will be that firstborn son. They are farmers, so you will learn humility in your life, and the value of hard work. And make no mistake, the work _will_ be hard, it will be backbreaking, but it is up to you to decide your own fate. We will not carve it into stone for you. We have given you a great chance to decide your own destiny: don't squander it."

Though Shen was by far the most dignified of the Jiao, even he, like his son Xiang, couldn't help but ask, "Why? No, I will _not_ be cowed. We, all of us, with the exception of my lovely wife, have done horrible things in our past lives. Unforgiveable things. So why in Heaven's name is your Lordship being so lenient? Why are we not being punished with all the tortures Hell has to offer?"

"Mind you," Chang spoke up, "We're not exactly complaining."

"We rather like not being tortured," Ang added.

"Silence!" Yanluo Wang snapped, and the tigers all cringed. "The reason for this court's leniency, despite the fact you all deserve harsher punishments, is that someone has spoken for you, and continues to speak for you."

The males all looked right at Ming Hua, who shook her head. She stepped over to the swirling pool and stirred the waters with her hand. When the water settled, it opened on a scene: Dalang at the family altar, laying out fresh food and lighting incense before the ancestor tablets of his brothers and father. Right now he was lighting incense. Behind him, Master Tigress came into the room bearing a plate of rice cakes and set them before the altar. She too lit incense and placed one smoking stick before each tablet. The husband and wife smiled at each other, pressed their hands together in prayer and began reciting sutras.

Xiang grinned. "Well, I'll be damned..."

Feng smirked. "Not anymore, anyway."

Ming Hua sighed happily and bowed in respect to the Lord of the Dead one last time. "I must return."

"Of course. Say your good byes."

She went to each of her sons and wished them well in their next lives. When she came to her husband, the tigress pressed her palm to his cheek. "There was so little I knew about you in life. In death, so many things I thought I knew turned out to be wrong. I wished we had a second chance..."

"I wish I had a second chance," Shen said, holding her petite hand in his large one.

She smiled. "Now you do. We'll be seeing each other soon. Goodbye, Shen. Until we meet again..."

* * *

Mei Xing and Lan Duo made an odd pair, but her help was just what the wolf needed. She had just taught him how to change a diaper, how to properly hold a baby, and feed it.

"I see a problem with this," he said about the latter. "I seem to lack certain things..."

"Then give him to me."

He stared at her.

"What?" she asked.

"You seriously know what you're asking? I mean...you know about how this kid..."

"I'm pretty aware of where babies come from, and I got the stretch marks to prove it." She laughed at his scowl. "I know what you mean, my husband explained it."

"And you're okay with it, even knowing about...?"

"Duo, let me nurse the baby before I break your legs."

"Yes'm." After a pause, he asked, "Won't the others try and, y'know, take the kid away?"

"They already tried, and you threatened to end them. They're not going to try again if they're smart."

"Still, there's no way they can think I'd be a good father, and if they saw what you were doing right now…"

"They might not happy about it, but they won't do anything about it," she said with finality.

"How do you know?"

"Let any of them try and take the kid away from me. Go on, let's see them try."

"Nuh-uh. I remember how you nearly broke my hand. I gotta say, though," he said with an admiring glance. "You are one of the most bad-ass ladies I've ever met. I mean, giving birth and immediately picking up a crossbow to take out some goons in the courtyard..."

She shushed him, "And not a _word_ to my husband. If he knew, he'd never let me have any fun ever again," she said with a wicked grin.

Duo sat back, watching the baby in her arms. "So what now?"

"What do you mean?"

"I can't raise a baby by myself."

"Why not? Single dads are hot."

He raised his brows. "You're the second woman who's said that to me. It's kinda unsettling."

"What? It's a major turn-on: nothing better than a man who's great with kids."

The wolf wisely kept his mouth shut about the subject. "They won't let me keep him."

"Bull. I was watching you fight from the window. I'm the one who sent Dalang down to help you. You wouldn't have fought like that if you didn't feel protective of this baby. I can't think of a better candidate for fatherhood."

"You're the only one who thinks that way. I mean, look at me: I'd be a terrible father. I swear like a sailor, I drink like a fish, and I've got a rap sheet longer than the Great Wall. No one in their right mind would give me a kid."

"Yeah, well, sucks for you that I have Mommy Brain. Here," she said, giving him back the leopard cub. "Now burp him. Use the cloth over your shoulder."

"Why?" he asked as he did as instructed. He was rewarded with a small burp from the baby...as well as some spit up. "Oh."

"Yeah, they'll do that."

"Hence the cloth?"

"Hence the cloth," she nodded sagely.

After a long silence, wherein the leopard baby fell asleep in Duo's arms, she finally asked, "So what'll you do now? Give up crime for good?"

"I'd thought about it before, but I guess I'll have to now. What kinda life can I give a kid if I'm a thief and a murderer?"

"Do you have a marketable skill?"

"Like...?"

"Carpentry, farming, artisan crafts, cooking, anything like that?"

"I don't suppose you call twenty-plus years of kung fu experience a 'marketable skill'?"

"Depends on the career."

"Army's out, what with my record."

"Maybe. And takes you away from home for a long time...hey!" she perked up, "What about teaching kung fu?"

A dark look crossed his face and he shook his head. "No. Never again."

Mei Xing hesitated, then quietly asked, "Who was it?"

"What?"

"The one you lost, who was it?"

"Why do you care?"

"Humor me."

He sighed heavily, adjusting the swaddled baby leopard in his arms. The wolf glanced at Mei Xing then sighed again, "His name was Lang, he was my first student, and he died in my arms, a few days ago. I saw to his burial yesterday. I trained him, taught him to fight, and in the end, he took a sword for me."

"Sounds like you taught him well."

"He's dead, how do you call that being trained well?"

"Well, if you'd done a bad job, he would've just let you die. You did a good enough job that he cared about you, that he respected you."

"I don't think that's it. I think he knew he had fallen into such a dark place, that there was no way out for him. A dark place that _I _should have seen him falling into. I could've caught him, you know. I knew the warning signs, hell, I encouraged them! And now he's dead, and it's my fault."

Mei Xing held back on saying the first thing that popped into her head: he had just sounded an awful lot like Shifu right there. Instead, she said: "He died saving you, and you're blaming yourself for that? You had no control over him..."

"So I guess this is that 'Survivor's Guilt' people talk about?"

"That'd be my guess." They fell into silence again. Mei Xing leaned back in her chair and sighed tiredly, closing her eyes. It wasn't long before she was asleep. Duo didn't bother waking her.

"She's something, isn't she?" Wu asked.

He jumped. "_Jeez_, lady, don't _do_ that!"

The elderly red panda looked up at him and smiled a little. "She's right, you know, you could be a good teacher."

"But..."

"And take it from someone who watched her own students die before her eyes: that does not make you a failure. It took me forty years to see that. Forty years of blaming myself, when it happens to all the best kung fu teachers...even Shifu."

Duo glanced down at her. "Even him?"

"He's suffered far worse than either of us can imagine. Mei Xing is right though: the military wouldn't suit you, and I honestly can't see you as a goon for hire. You're too smart for that."

He snorted.

"I did want to ask: where did you learn so much about childbirth?" she asked.

"My cousin. When he married in, his wife was pretty awesome. She was the only family member who really seemed to care. My uncle called me Lazy, my cousin called me a dumbass, but she was patient as Buddha and twice as good. She nearly died giving birth the first time, eventually she had a whole litter of kids. I dunno, I guess I felt some kind of loyalty to her."

"Because she treated you well."

"Yeah, I guess so." He paused. "She died not too long ago. My cousin actually bothered to tell me. I sent flowers, I couldn't make it back in time for the funeral. I guess it shows something. I didn't bother going home when my uncle died, because it didn't feel like home to me. Never did." The wolf looked down at the baby, who was now sleeping soundly. "What kind of life can this kid have with a guy who doesn't have a clue?"

Wu had at least one answer for him: "Again, ask Shifu. He knows a thing or two about being a single adoptive father..."

* * *

Shifu found Tigress in the last place he expected. Su Lin and several masters had helped set up a temporary hospital in an empty warehouse as close to the village center as possible. Further away, near the village wall, was the makeshift morgue. This was where Tigress had come. She was barely bundled up in a long-sleeved green tunic and black pants, a scarf loosely draped around her neck. Despite the shrill wind and arctic temperatures coming down off the mountains, she didn't shiver. She just stared at the rows of covered bodies, many of them shrouded and ready for burial, but many more simply left on the floor, faces covered. The warehouse was quiet except for the few volunteers going around leaving labels on top of identified bodies, others escorting fearful relatives in identifying their loved ones.

One horrible cry rose up from the furthest corner of the makeshift morgue. A woman just discovered she had been made a widow. Shifu's heart ached; that woman had only recently been married, they had a small child, and another on the way.

He made his way to Tigress's side and asked, "How many?"

"Nearly two hundred villagers," she answered quietly. "We're still counting the enemy dead. Though I frankly don't care."

"I know, but the enemies we fought likely had records, and I felt it best that we say once and for all that they won't affect the empire again."

"I know the reasons why," she said sharply. "I just want this all done and finished. I want to move on."

Shifu stared at her. This wasn't like her, these clipped responses...at least not anymore. "Tigress, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing."

"I've been married long enough to know it's never 'nothing'. What's wrong?"

Tigress sighed. "Not here. Outside."

Shifu acquiesced, followed her outside and shivered against the biting wind.

"This is my fault," she said.

The red panda paused and asked, not so subtly, "Are you out of your senses? Where did you get such an idea?"

"Fighting. Teaching the villagers to fight, the whole plan I created...this is my fault. If I had planned this better, if they had been trained better, this would never have happened. Those two hundred people would still be alive, and there would be no widows, no orphans, no grieving parents...It's all so senseless, why did they have to die? They didn't deserve it..."

"Tigress, this was _war_," he said. "War is _always_ senseless. And no one ever deserves to die, not even people who do awful things."

She rounded on him. "Oh no? What about the monsters that killed those people? Don't they deserve to die?"

"If they do, that's not my call to make, nor yours, for that matter. It is up to the Emperor to deal out justice."

"What justice? Those people are still dead."

"Yes, and now you see how senseless it all is. You want revenge, not justice, and I want you to know that it is a dark path to follow. Executing the ones that did this won't bring back the victims. They must be punished, yes, but there are much worse things than death."

"That could be me in there," she said suddenly, as the widow's sobs grew louder. "I could have been a widow because of this battle. I could have died, and left Dalang a widower. I could have lost Shang...I could have lost everyone, and everything."

"But you didn't. Tigress, I know this is hard, but you have come out of much worse and risen to the occasion. You are stronger than this, and I think we both know it."

She opened her mouth to speak, hesitated, thought better of it, then struck up the nerve to say, "I don't feel it. I was so sure of everything, Master, and now I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know what to do next. I had planned this far, but I never expected this. I never thought of a plan for rebuilding..."

He touched her hand. "Then let us help. Remember what Sonam likes to say: when you can't walk, you crawl; when you can't crawl, find someone to carry you. You have done more than your fair share, and now it is time to rest. You are not immortal: go home, get some rest."

"I can't rest, not with so much work to do..."

"Tigress, let me worry about that. Trust me, after being stuck in a room with a laboring snow leopardess, I could use the exercise and fresh air. Go home, have a hot meal, and get some sleep. Be with your son, with your husband, and don't come back out until you're ready. Can you promise me this?"

She was silent, and wouldn't meet his gaze. "Alright, I'll go home."

"Good. Listen," he said, tugging on her sleeve. "I say this only because I'm worried. I've never seen you like this."

"I know."

"And Tigress?"

She finally looked him in the eye. "Yes, Master?"

She was surprised to see the mournful look on his face, and how it aged him. "Don't isolate yourself. Don't do the same thing I did. Surround yourself with people, even when the thought of a crowd exhausts you. Don't let yourself be alone."

She didn't nod. She didn't say anything to acknowledge what he said. Instead, she sighed and headed home.

* * *

The next day dawned dreary, bearing a sky that threatened yet more snow. The work of cleaning up after the battle had begun. The one hospital the village had was not big enough to accommodate all the wounded, so a special field hospital had to be set up in an empty warehouse. The kung fu masters all chipped in, bringing firewood, collecting bandages, medicines, some from their own personal effects.

And Su Lin was there, organizing the whole thing. She didn't stop to talk, stopping only long enough to check on patients and on women and men whom she had recruited to help nurse the wounded back to health.

The worst part of her job, however, was identifying who was to be sent to the makeshift morgue, a few blocks away. The air was bitterly cold, and there were only so many blankets to go around. The hospital she had set up was as organized as it could possibly be, but it wasn't enough. So the female panda was astonished and relieved when mid-morning, a cloaked figure walked into the hospital and asked for her. Su Lin approached the person. "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for the Wu sisters."

"I'm sorry, they're not here. I haven't seen them since the battle. Did you..." she hated having to ask this question several times already; she hated seeing the looks on people's faces, who had held out hope their loved ones were alive.

"The morgue?" the cloaked one asked. "Yes, been there first, no sign of them. Thank you for confirming that they're neither dead nor injured. Do you know where I can find them? They report to me."

"Have you tried the Long and Feng Café?"

"The what?"

"Used to be called 'Ping's Noodles'. I know the proprietors. And they've met the sisters. They should know. And hey, do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"Bring back a bowl of noodles for me? I've had nothing but some onion broth and a rice ball since yesterday..."

The figure held up a gloved hand. "Say no more. Give me a few minutes, you'll get your noodles. Thanks for the tip."

By the time the cloaked one got to the restaurant, the Wu Sisters and Wu Lien were sitting outside at a single table, sharing a pot of tea. The Sword of Heroes could not have cut the tension at that table. Master Crane and Master Viper stood by to mediate in case things got hairy. The serpent calmly sipped her tea, while Crane glanced between the furry faces and looked uncomfortable. The time for an entrance was now.

Zhu saw the figure first. She waved, "Hey, Boss."

Tian and Jiang perked up immediately, the former jumping up and giving the proper salute. "Sir!"

"At ease, I came for some food for the panda at the hospital...and a status report. Food first."

Wu Lien snapped, "And just who the hell are you? You think a complete stranger can just walk right in here after the melee yesterday and I'm just supposed to accept..."

The figure sighed and took the hood off.

Wu stopped talking.

Viper did a spit take. Master Crane took several moments to get his voice to work before he croaked out his astonishment:

"Mei Ling?!"

The mountain cat, Mei Ling, proud graduate of the Li Da Kung Fu Academy, smiled back at him as warmly as if they were still students together. "Hey, Crane, how's tricks?"

Wu whirled on the avian. "You know her?!"

"Know her? She's one of the best – actually _the_ best – alumni of the Li Da Academy."

"Not to mention the best wedding guest in China," Viper said.

"Oh stop," Mei Ling teased, "You're making me blush. I hate to ask a favor when I've seen you for the first time since your wedding, but that panda girl, who's working at that hospital? She desperately needs some food. I'll pay, if you can get it to her."

"Is Su Lin okay?" Viper asked worriedly.

"She looks ready to drop."

"Laborer's Special," Wu Lien nodded, and Viper slithered off to fill the order. "Ask Ping and Dalang to whip it up. High-protein and carbs," she explained to the female felines. "Perfect thing for someone who's working hard all the time. Now, you still haven't said who you are."

The mountain cat bowed low in respect to the elder. "I am Mei Ling, _Commander_ Mei Ling, of the Imperial Army, at your service," she said with a respectful smile. "You must be the famous Wu Lien I've heard so much about. Ma'am, it's an honor."

Flattered, Wu could only nod. "I am...not sure where this is going."

Mei Ling looked to the Wu Sisters. "None of you told her yet?"

"We were going to," Zhu said haltingly. "Just...didn't seem like the right time, or the right words..."

"Certain words were exchanged last time we saw each other," Jiang explained.

"So..." Mei Ling said, "You'd rather I explain?"

Aunt Wu finally snapped, "As long as _someone_ explains, I don't really care who!"

"Should I stick around?" Crane asked.

A glare from Wu Lien silenced him, and a sympathetic look from Mei Ling gave him his answer. "You're right, I should just fly Su Lin's food over to her once its ready. Uh...you ladies have fun!" and he bolted away.

Mei Ling simply offered a smile to the Wu family, and especially to Wu Lien. "So...would you like the long version, or short and sweet?"

"Just give it to me straight, honey."

"Okay. Your daughters were never outlaws."

Wu paused, stunned. "What?"

"They were never outlaws," Mei Ling repeated. "They've been working for me these last ten years. Your training gave them unique skills that I needed. I am the head of the Imperial Special Forces, and your daughters were – and are – my best undercover agents."

"Wait, wait..." the red panda interrupted. She looked up at her eldest, viewing her in a new light. "You're Black Ops? This whole time, you've been..."

"Legit?" Tian finished. "Yes, Mother, we've been working for the government this whole time. I'm sorry we never told you..."

"We couldn't," Jiang said. "Given the nature of our work, we thought it would be best to keep you in the dark."

"You would've just worried about us," Zhu explained.

Mei Ling cut in: "Your safety was also of high concern."

"_My_ safety?" Wu asked. Then she thought about it, the years spent on the run, the numerous enemies her daughters had likely acquired over the years... "Okay, fair enough. But all these years...those people, their victims, _your_ victims?" she asked her daughters.

"Enemies of the state," Jiang said.

"And that man who died right before you went on the run..."

Mei Ling summarized: "Long story short: they've been sleeper agents for the black ops forces, trained to take out anyone who means to hurt the empire."

"Which explains why they only killed men and not women and children."

Zhu spoke up, "To be fair, some women really deserved it, but those were our orders."

"So why Koshchei?"

Mei Ling sighed and rubbed the corners of her eyes. After sending an apologetic look to the female snow leopards, she said, "We did some digging...their mother was the widow of a man Koshchei killed; we're not sure why he was assassinated. Anyway, the widow took her daughters to a safe house and left them there, trying to shake Koshchei off her trail. He caught up with her instead."

Wu's body suddenly felt very heavy. So that was what happened...that poor woman. Her daughters didn't seem as surprised; perhaps they had already known. "But why didn't he come back for the girls?"

The mountain cat said, "My guess? He probably figured they were too young to know anything, or too young to remember his face. But Tian remembered. Children remember a lot more than you think, even when young." The Mountain cat paused and looked at Wu. "This would also be a good time to tell you that the magistrate's son that died suddenly ten years ago..."

"Don't tell me: Koshchei too?"

Mei Ling tapped her nose with her finger. "He framed your daughters, so Tian had reason to go after him. She had several reasons, but I ordered her to stand down; she had a personal reason for going after him, even if her sisters didn't know the whole story. I thought she was too close and would slip up, get herself and her sisters killed."

"She never was one to follow orders," Wu said, shaking her head, but smiled at her eldest anyway.

"No...no she wasn't. And in hindsight, I'm glad she didn't listen to me," Mei Ling agreed, with a grateful smile sent in Tian's direction. "We had more than enough intelligence to take him out than we would have if she obeyed me."

"So what you're saying is..." Jiang hinted.

"I'm saying it's easier to beg for mercy than ask for permission, yes."

"So we're off the hook?" Zhu asked.

"For now," the mountain cat warned.

Zhu grinned. "Sweet."

Wu Lien was silent, but after a while, she dared to look up at her daughters. "We lost so much time."

"We have a lot to catch up on," Tian said.

Mei Ling excused herself. "And I'll let you get to it. I got to find Altai and Hu Quon. Ladies, take all the time you need."

* * *

Altai was writing up his report for the emperor when he got a visitor. The rhino had been expecting this ever since the battle ended several days ago, but had rather hoped it could have waited until after the paperwork had been filed. He looked up from his desk as Tai Lung entered the room.

"Mornin'."

"It's evening," the snow leopard corrected.

"Is it? Man, I've been working on this for too long," he said as he rubbed his eyes. The rhino got up to open the window; some cold air would wake him up, make him more alert. Though he should have just waited for Tai Lung to cut to the chase:

"You lied to me."

Altai sighed and closed the shutters. When he turned back to face Tai Lung, the rhino made a face. "Please don't look at me like that."

"You _lied_ to me," he repeated, arms crossed over his chest. "You told me I could trust you."

"And you can."

"You said you were dishonorably discharged."

"Yeah, _that_ part was a lie. Everything else was the truth. I did go to the capital to lodge a complaint. I didn't get to, because when I got there...well, I got a letter from Oogway. He seemed to suspect something was going on in Chorh-Gom...he didn't know what it was exactly, but he assured me you needed to stay put."

"Why?"

"He didn't think you had learned your lesson. I protested, sent a letter back, telling him you were in real danger there, but I didn't get anything in return. All these years I thought he had ignored my request to at least transfer you to a new facility, find someone else to handle your incarceration; I realize now that he had very good reasons for keeping you there. It was all a part of this prophecy thing I keep hearing about, wasn't it? Are you really the Phoenix Warrior?"

Tai Lung paused, sighed through his nose, then nodded.

Altai snorted. "Looks like I wasn't the only one keeping secrets."

"I couldn't tell you."

"Why not?"

"I—" he stopped himself, then said guiltily, "I wasn't sure I could trust you. But I also thought...well, I didn't quite believe it myself."

"Seeing is believing, then, isn't it?"

"No lie." He paused again. "So you weren't discharged...what happened?"

"I got recruited to Black Ops. The Emperor himself requested I go, join Commander Mei Ling's unit. He was concerned with intelligence reports of defectors and traitors. He also tasked me with finding more operatives. I recruited Quon myself when I saw what he was capable of in the Academy. The Wu Sisters, of course, were already in the system, as it were.

"Then you escaped from prison. I knew it was a matter of time, and so when you did, I was probably the only one in the empire who wasn't surprised...except for Oogway, maybe. Then you survived the Wuxi finger-hold. News about that traveled pretty damn far. Word got out that you were invincible, and almost as soon as that got out, outlaws started putting a bounty out for anyone that could kill you. That's when I got involved. I went undercover, to try and weed them out. See, I couldn't tell you the whole truth, as much as I wanted to. I couldn't blow my cover."

"Were you really widowed?"

"Yes. After my cover got blown."

"Oh."

"Yeah, 'oh'." Altai fell into a despondent silence, and Tai Lung allowed him a moment to reflect.

"How's your wife?" Altai asked suddenly, desperate to change the subject.

"She's fine, resting. It's a girl."

"Are you happy about that?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

Altai allowed himself a smile. "She's only a few days old and already got you wrapped around her finger."

"We'll see about that," the snow leopard said, "Though to be honest...I wouldn't mind if that did happen." He allowed himself a smile, but then cut to another topic: "What do you know about Zang Deshi? Aside from what you've already told me?"

"Zang, right. He's been on our notice for months, now. The emperor started looking at him because he got too greedy. Suddenly the pay he got from being an officer was not enough for his lifestyle. We discovered after a lot of snooping that he had a lot of debts, and he was getting desperate. We knew it was only a matter of time before he started selling secrets to our enemies so that he could pay his bills; this was what the emperor was really worried about, what with the continuing war against the Mongols. Vachir was one of the people he owed money to; his death was actually more of a relief for him than anything else. After you broke out, we discovered that, even after you'd been presumed dead for a year, there was still a warrant out for your arrest, and a hefty reward for you or any information leading to your capture. When this whole thing started, we had no idea you were still alive...so we thought, what harm could come from showing him your wanted poster? So..." the rhino said guiltily, "It turns out you were _not_ dead, so then we had an ethical problem on our hands: warn you and thus tip off Zang that we were on to him, or keep it silent and just have a few personnel keep an eye on you from afar to keep you safe until we could nab Zang."

"So, let me ask you this," Tai Lung said. "Was I in any real danger?"

"Only the danger you got _yourself_ into," Altai said, making a face. "Let's face it: I'm good at my job, but even I can't work miracles. You're so stubborn, it got irritating more than a few times."

"So who was it? Who was keeping an eye on me?"

"Well, there were the guys you identified as the undercover Buddha's Witnesses, Crane's mom, then Mr. Lu..."

"Mr. Lu?!"

"Yeah, he's retired from the Intelligence Corps. We offered a pension, but he turned it down in favor of keeping an eye on you for free. He said something about being grateful you saved his home, or something, and that it's the least he could do..."

"Next time he comes in, he's getting a full course meal on the house."

"Don't bother, he won't accept it."

"What's going to happen to Zang now?"

Altai suddenly looked very tired. "Death, most likely. I doubt the Emperor will show pity on someone so willing to kill, no matter how good a soldier he is. Was. One way or another, he won't leave this valley alive."

For some reason, this made the snow leopard feel sick. Tai Lung had no love for the horse, of course, but the thought of him being in any way responsible for yet one more death...

"I know what you're thinking," Altai said, "And stop it. It's not your fault. He made his bed. But don't think about him anymore, alright? You got a family now, you got a job, a home, a life that anyone would want. Focus on that. Leave the unpleasant stuff to me."

"Hardly seems fair," the snow leopard said, "You doing all the work."

"Are your crab wontons as good as people say?"

"Depends. What do they say about them?"

The rhino smirked at the feline's compliment fishing. "If you feel bad enough about it, just keep me supplied with some good food, and that's payment enough for me."

A knock came to the door and Mei Ling entered the room. Altai stood to attention, despite the mountain cat's order for him to be at ease. Tai Lung was shocked. "Aren't you...?"

"Yeah, Commander Mei Ling, Special Forces," she said tiredly. "I was at Crane and Viper's wedding, remember? I've been reintroducing myself all day, and I need to borrow the Captain for a while. Captain? Grab the Lieutenant, we have some business to take care of."

"Yes, ma'am." The rhino gave Tai Lung a look that said "don't wait up" and followed his commanding officer out of the room.

"Business that can't wait, ma'am?"

"Business that's overdue," she said, handing him a scroll. "I got my orders before I left the capital. Where's Zang Deshi?"

Altai felt a tightening in his throat. He knew what was coming. "He's in a holding cell, the same one Tai Lung was held in before going to prison, in fact."

Mei Ling only nodded. "Alright. The fewer witnesses, the better. I don't want this getting out."

"Ma'am, we have orders; no one can fault us for following them."

"And if we're lucky, we may not have to follow them at all."

Hu Quon met them out in the hall and they continued their way down into the depths of the mountain. Down and down they went, the corridor seeming to grow longer the further they walked. "I thought I should mention," Mei Ling said, reaching into her pocket and handing something to each of them. "You've both been promoted. Congratulations Commander Altai and Captain Hu."

No one was more surprised than Altai, and a quick glance towards Quon told him the tiger was just as flabbergasted, but didn't question it. Altai bit back on his concerns and pinned the new badge to his uniform.

Finally, they came to the holding cell. "It's best if he doesn't see me," Mei Ling said. "These are our orders. Review them, and carry them out."

"Why shouldn't he see you, ma'am, if you don't mind my asking?" Quon asked.

"You know how he is about women in positions of authority," she reminded with a firm look.

Cowed, the young tiger only nodded in grim affirmation. "Yes, ma'am, I know only too well." He scanned the same scroll with his rhino commander, and his expression darkened. Altai's countenance was just as grim.

"So, these are our orders?"

"They are," the mountain cat said. All mirth had left her; she was now strictly business. "I don't expect you to take any pleasure in this. I wouldn't."

"I know you wouldn't," the rhino said. "You're too good for that."

She allowed him a small smile, but it quickly vanished. "Give him the options, hopefully he'll take one of them, and save us a lot of trouble."

Altai stared at the door and sighed heavily. The rhino looked down at the new patch on his uniform and took in another deep breath. Quon cleared his throat and nodded once at the closed door. "We can't put this off any longer, Commander."

Gods, it was hard to hear that. As bad as their falling-out had been, Altai still considered Vachir a good friend and ally. To suddenly occupy the very rank of his fallen comrade seemed almost sacrilegious, at the very least like Altai was taking his place. True, the Anvil of Heaven no longer existed as an entity, as a unified group, but there would be nothing to shake the association with the fallen warden of Chorh-Gom prison. Altai's misgivings, of course, weren't helped knowing that he now stood at a cell door to dole out a punishment he was sure Vachir would have condoned.

"I don't want to do this, Captain," he whispered to Quon. "But I know orders are orders."

"If I may speak plainly, sir, you were not there. You didn't see the things he did."

"I believe you. I just wish my first duty as a Commander wasn't…"

Quon nodded and gave him a half-hearted smile. "I understand. No one ever wants to be responsible for something like this…"

The rhino nodded. "But it's gotta be done." Fixing the collar of his cloak, he nodded once at Mei Ling, who silently handed him a sealed scroll and a set of keys. Altai stepped forward and unlocked the cell door, admitting a thin shaft of light into the tiny cell. There was only room enough for himself, and for the prisoner sitting against the wall.

Zang Deshi impassively looked up at the rhino and tiger, the horse no longer the picture of precision. His coat, mane, and tail were dirty and hung in tangled tendrils, and though his dark eyes still shone with intense tenacity, a sudden dullness entered them, as if he knew exactly what was coming. His eyes almost immediately fell on the scroll in Altai's hands. "Is that what I think it is?" he asked carefully.

Grim-faced, the rhino tore off the imperial seal and opened the scroll to read the orders: "'Captain Zang Deshi, by order of his Imperial Majesty, you are hereby stripped of all rank and privileges thereof, for gross conduct unbecoming of an officer of the Crown, and for high treason against the Emperor. You are hereby ordered to commit suicide, by whichever method or methods are immediately available. Refusal or failure to do so will result in immediate beheading and innumerable shame upon your family for generations…'" Altai rolled up the scroll. "I'll spare you the rest. It goes on like that for a while. Besides, you know what you did."

Zang nodded. "I do." He paused. "What are my immediate options?"

"You mean aside from ritual suicide?" Quon ironically asked. Much to the tiger's surprise, Zang smirked back.

"I should have foreseen this," the fallen warrior confessed. "This is for the best. I can't live in a world where a criminal is a hero and a hero is executed for doing what is right—"

"No, Deshi," Quon growled. "What you did is _not_ right. You endangered innocent lives, put the entire empire at the mercy of a psychopathic madman, and nearly started a civil war, and all for vengeance."

"You didn't know Vachir—"

Altai interrupted, "No, but _I_ did. If he knew what you had done, and what you almost did, he'd be as ashamed of you as I am."

Zang fell silent, for the first time realizing that debate was futile. He leaned back against the wall and quietly asked again, "What are my options?"

Quon opened up the sack he had brought with him. "You have three choices: cyanide, a white scarf, or your sword."

"So can I take the coward's way out," he analyzed, "by consuming poison; I can hang myself; or I fall on my own sword. Such decisions…"

"Make it quick," Altai ordered. "I don't want to start my promotion with an execution. And I know you don't want to shame your ancestors by showing up to the afterlife with your head under your arm."

Zang had gone completely silent, staring into space as he considered his choices. For instance, he considered his choice to go after Tai Lung in the first place. He considered his reaction to being told there was nothing he could do, that the snow leopard was blameless. He considered how he had completely disregarded the laws of the country he loved more than gods and heaven to find peace and justice for a slaughtered friend. And now he considered all the decisions he had made in the past two months. Swallowing down the lump in his throat—which he wasn't sure if it was fear or some other equally strong emotion—he finally looked up at Quon.

"The sword."

* * *

The immediate fate of Zang Deshi was completely unknown to Jiao Dalang who, for the first time in weeks, was able to make the trek from the village to the Pool of Sacred Tears on Wudan Mountain. He brought with him a small box of dumplings, but they were not, of course, meant for him. When he arrived, he saw another figure standing over the grave of Jiao Shang the Elder, peering at the tombstone with a specific sort of gravity he knew all too well. Dalang quietly stepped over to the other tiger, whose hand rested on his sword hilt, the young tiger's green eyes studying the grave. Dalang knelt and rested his offering in front of the tombstone, noting the similar offering of food…remarkably, one of Shang's favorites.

"I wish I'd known him," Quon said softly.

Dalang looked back at him, then straightened, brushing dead grass off his knees. "Shang was a mystery to a lot of people," Dalang said. "I'm not sure I knew everything, and he was my brother."

"You two were close?"

"As close as time and distance allowed, yeah."

They fell into silence again, and Dalang stared at the other offering. They were lotus seed buns...lotus seed buns with a blackcurrant preserve filling; it was Shang's favorite dessert. He was the only one in the family who could eat them, though; every other Jiao brother was allergic to blackcurrants. But how would Hu Quon have known that?

Quon sighed. "All I knew about him were rumors, tall tales, perhaps. I heard that he suffered from Dragon Rage, an affliction that every combatant fears he will suffer. I heard that, though he was dangerous with a sword and never lost a fight, he was still honorable and just. He never killed for the sake of it."

"That's all true," Dalang said. "But he was also very caring, and very protective of those he cared for. When I was little, he used to shadow me to make sure I didn't get hurt. He shadowed all of us, until we got old enough to look after ourselves. He was more of a father to me than Shen ever was."

"Do you think, if he'd had any children, he would have been a good father to them?"

Dalang hesitated, then turned to look into the youth's face, and finally put the last piece into the puzzle. He frowned, and bluntly answered, "Cut the crap, kid, I know who you are. And yes, he would have loved you as much as he would've loved any and all of his kids. Believe me, if my brother had stuck around with your mom, I bet he would have made an awesome dad." He paused. "How _did_ you know he was…?"

"Mom told me," Quon said sadly. "He was the only man she'd ever…well, ever _known_, if you catch my drift. She met him, fell in love with him, then he had to leave, and I was born a few months later. She did love him, and I think he maybe loved her too. Now that I know about the Dragon Rage, I think I know why he kept everyone at arm's length."

"Yeah…he didn't want anyone getting close to him," Dalang reflected. "He didn't want them to suffer when he finally…well, Dragon Rage takes its victims young; most of the afflicted never live to see forty. No matter how hard he tried, though, he just couldn't keep people from loving him."

"He was a good man."

"Yeah, he was a very good man."

Dalang paused, and asked, "How did you know he liked blackcurrants?"

Quon shrugged. "I didn't. I guess I thought that if I liked something, he might've liked it too; Mom always told me how much I was like him. But you know what the weird thing is? I'm the only one in my family _not_ allergic to them."

Dalang chuckled, "You are your father's son, alright."

They stood in silence a while longer before Dalang cleared his throat and once again turned to face the youth. "You can stay here, you know, in the Valley. I might not be much older than you, but I think I could be a pretty kick-ass uncle."

Quon smiled, chuckling a little. "I appreciate it, but I think its best we kept this between us. There are still people out there who would eradicate any Jiao, regardless, and if they knew…" he shook his head. "No, this is for your safety as much as mine."

"But you'll visit?"

"Sometimes, as often as I can." He turned back to the tombstone. "I need to at least make it out here for Ghost Festival and New Year's. I think he'd appreciate the visits, even if he never met me."

"He'd also appreciate you coming to know his nephew. Your cousin would look up to you…"

"We both know having anything but a purely professional relationship is a bad idea, Mr. Jiao," Quon replied, with the small, sad smile that Jiao Shang had been known for. "You have your family, and someday, I'll have one of my own. I may not carry on my father's name, but I can continue my mother's family line, and that's good enough for me." Quon glanced back at him with a wry smile that Dalang remembered gracing his brother's face on more than one occasion. "Besides, your 'family' is complicated enough without me."

Dalang rolled his eyes. "Ain't _that_ the truth..."

"No, really…your aunt is also your mother-in-law, and your in-laws are both red pandas, one of whom is the father to your wife, who is a tigress. Your wife is the breadwinner in your family while you're the stay-at-home parent who spends his days cooking, cleaning, and watching your son; your brother and sister-in-law are snow leopards; you call your business partners your brothers; and Tai Lung's daughter and your son are 'first cousins' without actually being biologically related."

"And that's just the _immediate_ family," Dalang joked.

Quon laughed, but sobered when he looked back at his father's gravestone. The younger tiger sighed and rested his palm on the stone. "Now that the mission's completed, I've asked for a leave of absence. Commander Mei Ling has authorized me to undertake a more…personal mission."

"What would that be?"

"I want to know how many others there are."

"Others…wait—you think Shang had other—"

Quon gave him a flat look.

"—Okay, I see your point."

The young lieutenant coughed, and continued, "Rumors of his, um, prowess are, ah, legendary amongst the women who knew him…"

"And the men; can't forget them."

Quon stared at him.

"I'm kidding."

"Okay, sure. Well, long and short of it is that I want to see how many half-siblings I have…and, consequently, how many nieces and nephews _you_ have."

"So you think there are scores of little Shangs running around the empire, each one cuter than the last?"

"That's my theory, anyway," Quon said with a slight ironic tone. "It will require a lot of research, finding which places the horde traveled, where they stayed for extended periods, and try to track how many women—and men—"

"I said I was kidding about that, didn't I?"

"—I like to be thorough."

"Well, either way you slice it, you've got your work cut out for you."

"You think so?"

Dalang thought back to the clearest memories he had of his brother and his life amongst the Jiao…and the chef's cheeks flushed. "Trust me, I know. You are in _way_ over your head."

Quon only smiled. "We'll see about that."

It would not be until the fifth birthday of Dalang and Tigress's son Shang, that Captain Hu Quon would admit defeat. He had kept his promise to send his Uncle Dalang a letter every time he found one of Shang Senior's children…and Dalang would have a drawer full of some twenty-odd letters in his kitchen after only two years of searching.

* * *

Back at the Long and Feng, two weeks after the battle that was starting to be called the Dong Zhi War, Tai Lung woke up with a start when the baby started crying. It was still early. Mei Xing grumbled as she sat up again and began to nurse her child, and Tai Lung, similarly, was having a sleepless night. The baby waking up every two hours to feed, have her diaper changed, and simply be held, was already taking its toll on him. And it would take months for her to finally sleep through the night.

_Gods help us both._ Finally, with a groan, he sat up, his body feeling stiff from overexertion and fatigue. "I'm going to get something from the kitchen. Anything I can get you?" he asked his wife.

"A full night's sleep would be fantastic," she retorted.

"I think we're right out of that. Anything else?"

"Nah, I think I've got it."

He stood and dressed in a house robe and, tying the belt around his waist, leaned over to give his wife a kiss and go downstairs. At the table in the middle of the room, however, he found Tigress sitting, her head laid in her crossed arms on the table. She had been asleep for a while, and, Tai Lung noticed with consternation, that bottle of wine by her hand had been full the night before. Now he had yet one more person to worry about.

He strode over, snatched the half-empty bottle away and jumped when Tigress stirred. She looked up at him blearily, then, without seeming to care, lowered her head back down.

Bugger, he knew what this was. He had felt it in Chorh-Gom. He had bouts of it still, years later. He knew how debilitating it was, and he would be damned if it happened to someone else, someone he – dare he say it? - cared about.

"Tigress, aren't you going to bed?"

"I don't want to move."

"That's not the most comfortable place to be, you know."

"Please, Tai Lung...just leave me alone."

He paused. "Did you drink all this wine yourself?"

"Yes. Is that such a damn problem?"

"It can be, and I'm not going to let it be a problem." He pulled up a stool and sat adjacent to her. "Talk to me. What's wrong?"

"Why do you care?"

"Humor me."

Tigress sighed, then, groggily, raised her head out of her arms and looked at him. She wasn't still drunk, but she was certainly hung over. "Did you know nearly two hundred villagers died in that battle? Two hundred. And it's my fault."

He frowned, and stared at her like she had lost her mind. "What? Where did you get such an idea? Who told you that?"

"No one, but I know. I know it's my fault. If they had just evacuated, they'd all still be alive..."

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do!" she snapped. There were tears in her eyes. "I'm responsible."

"_They_ were responsible," Tai Lung urged. "They knew what they were getting into. Shifu told me, Auntie told me, even the villagers _themselves_ told me – they knew what they were doing, they knew what was at stake. Tell me this: do you go into every battle expecting to die?"

"Not always."

"But you know it is a distinct possibility, don't you?"

"Of course."

"So did they, Tigress. They knew that, too. And they fought anyway. Didn't they have a choice to run?"

"Yes, they did."

"_Did_ they run?"

She didn't answer.

"Tigress, did they run?"

She hesitated, then said quietly, "No."

"They could have, but they didn't, right?"

"Right," she said, also quietly. She sniffed and said, "But it was _my_ plan. I told Shifu, the villagers, the magistrate, hell, I told the _army_ that I took responsibility for whatever happened to the valley...and now nearly two hundred people are dead, because of my stupid plan!"

He reached out and grabbed her hand. "It was not stupid, it was brave. And despite what you think, _you_ didn't kill those villagers. The _outlaws_ did. And you can't control them."

She was shaking her head. "Everyone's saying that those men, women, children – _children_! - all died as heroes..._heroes_," she spat out the last word. "As if it makes it better! Calling them heroes doesn't bring them back!"

"Neither does drowning your sorrows in drink."

Tears were now flowing freely down her cheeks. He sighed, and reached out to cup her chin and turn her head towards him. "Tigress, don't do this to yourself. Don't give in to despair. Take it from someone who's been there, who gave into that obsession and dwelt on it for years: It's not worth it. I know you're hurting, and I know how that feels, but you can't let this consume you."

"Why not?"

"Because you'll turn out like me."

She sniffed, turning her head away. "You didn't turn out so bad."

"Oh, didn't I? The rampage, the prison, the prison break that killed over nine hundred men? Yes, I'm a real saint."

"You turned yourself around."

"And so can you. I don't want you making the same mistakes I made, and this," he said, holding up the wine bottle, "is not a good road either."

Tigress stared down at the wood grain and picked at it with her claw. Tai Lung sighed again, then got up to stoke up the oven and put the kettle on for tea. It seemed like the right thing to do. Then something else came to him. Putting the kettle on a separate burner, he turned back to Tigress and grabbed her hand. "C'mon, there's something I want to show you."

It probably said something about how depressed she was, because Tigress let him lead her to the altar room at the center of the house. He had grabbed two rugs and laid them out on the floor, facing the altar. He placed her at the top of one rug while he took his place at the top of the other. "Do as I do, follow my lead. I want to teach you something I learned at the Phoenix Temple. First, we'll learn to breathe."

She snorted, "I can already breathe just fine."

"Trust me. First, breathe in through the nose, making a hollow sound in the back of your throat. And then exhale through your nose. Listen to my breathing; it should be easier to pick it up if you can hear it."

Once he was sure she got it, he ran through the first of the sun salutations, showing her how it worked, then encouraging her to do it herself. "Moving from one pose to the other is what Sun Bear called 'vinyasa', or 'flow'. They key is to flow from one pose to the next as fluidly and gracefully as possible. We'll start with mountain pose. Inhale, raise your arms up over your head, exhale, bend forward with a straight spine..."

Tigress, with a quizzical look on her face, followed his example. From mountain pose, to back leg stretch, down to the lunge, then upward facing dog, downward facing dog, all through the flow of poses and back to mountain pose, with palms pressed together in front of their hearts.

"Excellent," he said with a smile. In spite of her depression, she smiled a little too. "Now, let's try it again..."

Both felines lost track of how long and how many sun salutations they did, but they did it in relative silence, except for the breathing, their only witnesses the ancestor portraits and tablets on the altar. At the end of the exercise, Tigress brought her hands back over her heart and let out a long exhale.

"How do you feel?"

"A...a little better," she admitted. "What did we just do?"

"Yoga. It's a kind of spiritual exercise Sun Bear taught Po and I. Really good for flexibility, and, I've found, good for the soul, too."

"Did you master it?"

"That's the beauty of it: you can't master yoga. Sun Bear practiced it for centuries and never mastered it. You can only practice it."

"Wait, wait..." she stopped him. "Sun Bear lived _how long_?"

"Oh, right, I didn't tell you the full story. Um, long story short: spring of eternal youth, both he and Oogway drank from it, extended their lifetimes, they were old friends, then they both died. The end."

"I'm missing more of the story, aren't I?"

"Oh, loads. But, we'll talk about it over some tea. How's that sound?"

Tigress looked up at the altar, lowered her arms to her sides and nodded. "Yeah, tea sounds good." After a pause, she turned to him. "Tai Lung?"

"Yes?"

"...Thanks."

He smiled. "You're welcome."

He made it to the door before she asked, somewhat timidly. "Do you...mind training me in this...'yoga'? Like, every morning, like what we just did?"

"Would you like that?"

"I think I would."

"Then we shall. Minus the drinking."

"Yes, _ow_..." she said, holding her pounding head. "_Definitely_ minus the drinking."

He offered his hand to her and she gratefully accepted it...and his praise: "Atta girl."

It became a ritual for them. Their spouses never quite understood it, but they never questioned it either. Every morning before dawn, Tigress and Tai Lung would meet in the altar room, or wherever there was sufficient space to practice, lay out their mats, and practice yoga. Over time, Tigress got better at it, and overall, much calmer. And much to Tai Lung's relief, she never touched a drop of alcohol again.

* * *

I thought Nievelion would appreciate that I made Duo a literal Papa Wolf (Thank you, TV tropes!). The scene of Koshchei's final destruction was, I admit, not as faithful to actual Chinese belief in what Hell and the Afterlife is supposed to be, but, being a rather non-religious person myself, I figure that there is a worse fate than the Hell of the Judeo-Christian tradition...and that would be the complete elimination of the soul. I personally can't see anything worse than that, so that was why I chose it as Koshchei's fate.

I added a scene about the Jiao family's ultimate fates because I wanted to tie in with the Shuffles I did way back, and also because I'm sure there are many Jiao Family fans who would be very unhappy with me if I left their fates unknown or open to conjecture.

Yes, just to clarify, the wolf Lang was reincarnated into the baby leopard. As far as he had fallen, I felt that as a person, rather than a character, Lang could have turned out much differently if he'd had a different upbringing. I'm a firm believer in the power of nurture over nature, and that strong families (of every shape and size, as long as they are loving and supporting) make for strong individuals.

As for the last scene, I wanted to poke fun at my own fic "That's Why They Call it the Present", and teach Tigress once and for all that drinking is generally not an advisable idea...at least for her, anyway.

Please read and review; I've been away too long and I want to know if I still got it.


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